ACADEMIC MYKOLA FEDOTOVYCH BILYASHIVSKYI AND HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY: PUBLICATION OF THE SOURCE AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH

Abstract

The article presents the publication of the autobiography by Mykola Fedotovych Bilyashivskyi (1923), who was the organizer and the first director of the largest museum in Ukraine of that time. The text of the autobiography is preceded with the analytical commentary based on the extensive research. The authors of the commentary underline that although scholars has been long familiar with the manuscript of this text, it has never been published in full and used only for the purpose of biographic references. On the contrary, the present publication demonstrates that this text is an important source for the history of Ukrainian nation-building, intellectual history and the history of Ukrainian museum-building in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, they proposed several strategies for further research on this text. Specifically, the published text is the draft version of the autobiography, and the authors of the commentary point out that Biliashivskyi’s contemporaries quoted some other version, presumably fair-copy, which is for now lost.

Key words: Kyiv art-industrial and scientific museum, M.F. Bilyashivskyi, Ukrainian intelligentsia, biography, manuscript