Methodology & Sources

Sloboda Project is a non-commercial research initiative documenting the architectural heritage of Kharkiv and Sloboda Ukraine through archival material and digital reconstruction. This page catalogues the primary sources and the research approach behind every building on the site.

Approach

Every reconstruction starts with an archival dossier: period photographs, 19th- and 20th-century topographic maps, situational plans, insurance surveys, contemporaneous memoirs, and — where they survive — architectural measured drawings. Working with a 3D artist from Kharkiv, we cross-reference the sources, verify proportions against neighbouring surviving buildings that carry measured records (Uspenskyy Cathedral, Pokrovskyy Monastery), and infer lost details from architectural analogues by the same school or the same master.

Primary source types

Pre-revolutionary and interwar photographs from the M. F. Sumtsov Kharkiv Historical Museum, the Central State Cinema-Photo-Phono Archive of Ukraine (TsDKFFA), Wikimedia Commons, and private collections
Kharkiv maps of the 1740s, 1804, 1846, 1887, 1917, 1932 and 1942 — from RGIA (Russian State Historical Archive), TsDIAK (Ukraine), and captured German wartime archives
Insurance surveys of Kharkiv properties, late 19th to early 20th century
Kharkiv memoirs: Lyudmila Gurchenko's My Adult Childhood; Dmytro Bahaliy's records; contemporary reporting in the Kharkiv and Komunist newspapers
Pre-revolutionary Kharkiv guidebooks (Ilyinskyy 1902; Gusev 1912)
Encyclopaedic entry-points (ESBE, BSE) used as the front door to primary citations

Cited online sources

People

Research, Ukrainian-language editing and historical fact-checking are done by Serge Vasil, the designer and founder of the project. The 3D reconstructions for this first cohort of buildings were made by Zhora — a Kharkiv-based 3D artist commissioned by the project since 2024.

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How to contribute

If you hold unpublished photographs, maps, measured drawings, or family recollections of University Hill's buildings — please write to us. The project welcomes new sources and credits every contributor.

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