site.btaMikhaylo Stanchev Awarded Honorary Professorship at Izmail State University of Humanities

Prof. Mikhaylo Stanchev of V. N. Karazin National University in Kharkiv has been awarded the honorary title of Professor at Izmail State University of Humanities, Stanchev told BTA on Friday. The ceremony took place during a roundtable on “The Development of the Bulgarian National Community in Ukraine: Contemporary Challenges” at Izmail University on Bulgaria’s National Holiday, March 3.

Izmail University Rector Prof. Yaroslav Kichuk announced the decision of the University’s Academic Council from February 27 and presented Prof. Stanchev with the honorary diploma. Kichuk highlighted Stanchev’s contribution to the development of Bulgarian studies in Ukraine and to scientific collaboration between Ukraine and Bulgaria. 

Stanchev thanked the university leadership for recognizing his modest work and delivered a lecture to the academic community and students at Izmail University. Members of the St Sofia Bulgarian Community in Izmail also attended the ceremony.

Early Years

Stanchev was born on April 28, 1953, in Kazakhstan, where his parents had been deported during the Stalinist repressions. His grandfather, Nikolay Markovich Stanchev, died in 1942 in Ivdelag death camp in Sverdlovsk region (present-day Russian territory). In 1956, after Stalin’s death and the denunciation of the cult of personality, his father and three children returned to their native Bulgarian village of Korten in Moldova. 

Education

1994-1996 Academy of Public Administration in Ukraine

1994 Academy of Foreign Trade in Ukraine (certification course)

1988-1989 St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia

1977-1980 Maxim Gorky Kharkiv State University (doctoral studies)

1970-1975 Maxim Gorky Kharkiv State University (Faculty of History)

Positions held

2022 – present – Institute for Historical Studies (Auxiliary Historical Disciplines and Informatics, historian)

2013-2014 – Professor, Institute of International Relations, Belgorod Federal University (Russian Federation)

2012 – present – Professor, Head of the Department of New and Recent History, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

2001-2003 – Professor, Department of International Law, Yaroslav the Wise Kharkiv National Law Academy

2001-2003 – Professor, Department of International Economics and International Economic Relation, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

1995-1996 – Associate Professor, Department of History of Diplomacy and International Relations, Institute of Oriental Studies and International Relations Kharkiv Collegium

1976-1991 – Assistant, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, N. E. Zhukovsky Kharkiv Aerospace University

1975-1976 – Assistant, Sevastopol Instrument-Building Institute (Autonomous Republic of Crimea)

Academic degrees and titles

2000 – Doctor of Historical Sciences. Dissertation „Dr. Krastyu Rakovski: Politician, Statesman and Diplomat“. Sofia.

1982 – Candidate of Historical Sciences. Dissertation „Participation of Komsomol Organizations in Soviet-Bulgarian Cultural Cooperation (1959-1971)“. Kharkiv.

Membership in scientific organizations and associations

2017 – Deputy Chairman of the Bulgarian-Ukrainian Joint Commission of Historians (Sofia-Kyiv)

2017 – Member of the Scientific Society „History of Diplomacy and International Relations“ (Kyiv, Ukraine)

2003 – 2016 – Member of the Governmental Commission on International Relations and European Integration (Kyiv, Ukraine)

2008 – present – Member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria

2008 – present – Member of the Historical Society in Bulgaria

Publications

Stanchev is the author and co-author of 34 monographs, documentary collections, and brochures, and nearly 400 scientific works on Bulgarian history and culture, Ukrainian-Bulgarian cooperation, the history of Bulgarian studies, and the Bulgarian diaspora in Ukraine and the Commonwealth of Independent States. His works have been published in English, French, Spanish, Lithuanian, Croatian, Czech, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, and Romanian, and are held in over 215 libraries worldwide. In 2015, in co-authorship with Yuri Felshtinsky, Stanchev published the documentary book The Third World War: The Battle for Ukraine.