Archive Leonid Hoshkevycha-3

Among the photos and illustrative materials, of interest are two photographs from Japan.  One, with a gifted inscription, is from a classmate of Leonid Hoshkevich in the Kiev Spiritual Seminary Miriy Saykakiv  and his pencil drawing, dated 1885.  And the second – a photograph of the clergyman without any particular notations and without a date.  We were able to determine that it is the image of Mikolay, Archbishop of Japan (1836-1912), the letter from whom is dated August 18, 1910, and was safeguarded in the archive of Father Leonid.  This is the only memento of his renown relative Joseph Antonovich Hoshkevich.

His Holy Grace Mikolay (Ivan Kasatkin) came to Japan in 1861, as the dean of the church of the Russian Consulate, where at the time Joseph Antonovich Hoshkevich was performing the duties of a consul.  Members of the Hoshkevich family, in particular Victor Ivanovich and later Leonid Ivanovich, maintained friendly relations with the Hieromonk Mikolay.  Evidencing this is the abovementioned letter and the memoirs of Victor Ivanovich Hoshkevich, published in “Russian News”  in 1912. (5)

Also of interest are a small number of documents from religious institutions of Khersonschina during the period 1834-1894.  There is an order from the Kherson spiritual administration on February 8, 1834 about the appointment of Yohim Petrov for Paramonarious, fragments of notes about christenings 1867-1887, a report about the inappropriate behavior of a priest from Kherson's Holy Spirit church Sebastian Shumigorsky (1886-1894) and so on.

The academic working over of the Hoshkevich family archives has just begun.  Ahead there is interesting and tedious work.  Our main goal – the preservation and study of that which we already have, and in the future – possibly the replenishment of the collection with new materials.  With the goal of securing the protection and rational access of the manuscript collection, the definitive work has been performed of creating back-up copies via scanning (digitalization), included in that count are the documents from the archives of Leonid Hoshkevich.  So the archive is awaiting its researchers.