Bookplates (ex-libris) of Libraries of Military Schools, Regiments and Battalions of the Russian Empire in the Library of the National Museum of Ukrainian History

The proposed study is dedicated to the topic almost unexplored by Ukrainian bibliologists and historians. The author substantiated the choice of bookplates and marginalia on rare books from the library collection of the National Museum of Ukrainian History as the main and not published micro-sources of historical and bibliographic information that had not been put into scientific circulation yet. This conclusion was done on the base of the review of historiography. It is explained that all studied sources have been identified in rare books during the full verification of the library collection of the National Museum of Ukrainian History 2017–2019, namely bookplates and marginalia of libraries of different military educational institutions, specifically, fundamental and squadron libraries of cadet corps, cadet schools and libraries of such military units as regiments (special book collections for officers reading are among objects of this study) and battalions. The author set that a lot of bookplates were identified "de visu" in separate volumes, as well as in rare books from the unexplored fragment of the private book collection of Pavlo Pototskyi, who was the General of the Army and Ukrainian museum employee and researcher, who later was subjected to Stalinist repressions. The author presented detailed scientific attribution of every bookplate and marginalia according to the methodology elaborated by her own. The history of development of military libraries of the Russian Empire Army, their organization and structure was generalized. It was also noted that the author adhered to the classification of six types of military libraries proposed by Anatoly Panchenko in one of his key studies. The relevance, purposes and perspectives of the research were determined. Absence of the separate research on bookplates of libraries of military schools, regiments and battalions libraries was generalized basing on the characteristics of a fairly large number of historiography sources too. In conclusions the author stressed on relevance of continuation of the proposed study of bookplates in the library collection of the National Museum of Ukrainian History that contributes to identification of unique fragments of private and public libraries to make a reconstruction of the hidden cultural heritage, introduce them into scientific circulation and promotion as objects of museum value.