The historiography of the history of the city of Oster is quite large and ancient. Most of the works of pre-revolutionary and Soviet scientists give a general idea of the city or highlight only bright moments from its life.
Collections of chronicles point to historical events related to this city and its importance in the strife during the Grand Ducal era. Royal charters, lustrations of Oster castle in 1552, 1616, 1622, 1628, and 1636, correspondence of Oster voivodes contained in the materials of the Register of Zaporozhian Army of 1649, and other publications make it possible to clarify the peculiarity of the development of this city as the center of the eldership on the border with the Moscow state during the Lithuanian-Polish rule. Then, as a place of stay for tsarist troops after the liberation war of 1648-1654. The process of formation of the Cossack officers and the growth of church land ownership is vividly reflected in the “General Investigation of the Estates of the Kyiv Regiment in 1729-1730”, unpublished documents of the Oster Sotnya from the Rumyantsev inventory, materials from the State Archives of the Chernihiv Oblast, and others.
The first study of Oster’s history by M. Oleksandrovych, “Oster Uyezd” (1881), depicts the life of the region during the period of Kyivan Rus and Polish rule. At the time, the city’s historical past was paid attention to in the works of S. Solovyov, N. Karamzin, N. Markevych, N. Kostomarov, D. Bantysh-Kamensky, P. Kulish, V. B. Antonovych, and M. S. Hrushevsky.
Materials related to the city of Oster can be found in the “Land Collections of the Chernihiv Governorate” and “Historical-Statistical Description of the Chernihiv Diocese,” which have been periodically published in the magazine “Kyivska Mynuvyshina”, the newspapers “Chernihiv Zemskyi Tyzhden”, and “Chernihiv Eparchyal Vedomosti”.
Nowadays, this topic can be traced in the works of O. I. Hurzhii, V. I. Borysenko, V. A. Smolii, O. S. Kompan, D. I. Boyko, K. I. Syletsiuk, V. V. Mavrodin, and other scholars.
Some information about the city’s past is provided in “Description of cities and villages of Ukraine. Chernihiv Oblast”. Data on the 11th-century monument “Yurieva Bozhnytsia” located in Oster can be taken from the “History of Ukrainian Art”, the magazines “Ukraine” of 12 March 1989 and “Monuments of Ukraine” of 31 July 1984. Interesting material on the history of Oster is contained in P. P. Tolochko’s book “Descendants of Monomakh”, published in the newspapers “Desnianska Pravda” and “Ukrainian Historical Journal”.
According to O. S. Kompan’s “Cities of Ukraine in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Oster was once very important in the economic life of Left-Bank Ukraine. However, no work has explored in detail the city’s path throughout its history.
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