Letters of Ivan Shpitkosky to Mykhailo Hrushevsky

Abstract

The article contains letters of the undeservedly forgotten Ukrainian historian, museum worker and teacher Ivan-Yulian Shpytkovsky to a prominent Ukrainian scientist, statesman and public figure, Professor Mykhailo Hrushevsky. Here is a brief sketch of his biography, studies at Lviv University, the formation under the influence of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s scientific interest in the Haydamak movement of the eighteenth century, his participation in the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people 1917–1921, participation in the social and scientific-cultural life of Galicia in the interwar period. It also explains the reasons for his forced withdrawal from active scientific work, the publication of scientific papers, caused primarily by the repressive policies of the Soviet government. Thus, in Lviv in the 1940s, a highly qualified specialist in paleography, sphragistics, chronology and heraldry was suspended from lecturing, accused of idealistic and nationalist views, and transferred to the position of laboratory assistant. Since 1930 I.-Yu. Shpytkovsky became a full member of the NTSh and most of his articles were published in “Notes of the Scientific Society. T. G. Shevchenko”. The letters to Mykhailo Hrushevsky published here shed light on the nature of the relations between the two scientists and on the laboratory of scientific research of Shpytkovsky, first of all on the study of the history of Koliivshchyna in 1768.