The development of Russian approximation theory was continued not in St Pe- tersburg, but in Kharkiv. The theories spread in Western Europe and the work of the St Petersburg Mathematical School there fell onto a fertile field because of the activities of Antoni-Bonifatsi Pavlovich Psheborski and Sergey Natanovich Bernstein. Kharkiv had already had a very good reputation as the mathematical centre of the Ukraine: In 1879 there had been founded one of the first mathe- matical societies of the Russian Empire and some outstanding mathematicians worked at Kharkiv university, e.g., Tikhomandritski (1883–1904), Lyapunov (1885–1902), Steklov1 (Lecturer’s job from 1891 until 1906) and Grave (1899– 1901).