JANUARY 1918 BOLSHEVISTS’ INVASION IN KYIV BY UKRAINIAN HUMANISTS: EGO-DOCUMENTS

Abstract

In the article it is researched the reaction of well-known Ukrainian humanists Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko and the director Vasyl Vasylko on a Bolshevists’ invasion in Kyiv at the beginning of 1918. The memoirs of N. Polonska-Vasylenko and the diary of V. Vasylko are examined as an example of ego-documents of that period. It was identifi ed, that memoirs of the historian N. Polonska-Vasylenko had some actual facts, despite being further influenced by memoirs’ style. The V. Vasylko’s diary, that had been later edited, had a striking national tone. Later, in memoirs of Soviet regime, he was forced to assess those times in ideologically and politically different ways. The diary of V. Vasylko showed a Ukrainian, who despite the perception of War as something tragic, joined Ukrainian military squads and later worked in authority bodies of UNR. The most important part of the diary — was the life of Ukrainian actors and directors in a period of war and political instability of 1914–1921, establishment and expansion of activities of modern Ukrainian theatre of Les’ Kurbas. This ego-document showed personal attitude of theatre environment towards events in Ukraine with a permanent financial difficulties and under circumstances of an ideological fight between social and European flows of the theatre art. N. Polonska-Vasylenko’s memoirs were in great importance, because there we could find true examples of Bolshevists’ violence, robberies and searches of the first days after the invasion in Kyiv. Some Ukrainian sergeants were executed in front of here. Ukrainian humanists were decisively against the bolshevists’ invasion and ‘red’ terror.