Scientific relationships between Dmytro Yavornyts’kyi and Dmytro Bagaliy (based on the correspondence between historians)

Abstract

The goal of the article is to analyze the essence, directions and main results of scientific contacts between Dmytro Yavornyts’kyi and Dmytro Bagaliy – two famous Ukrainian historians, worked in the second half of the 19th-the first third of the 20th centuries. To achieve this goal the author uses a wide range of research methods, including historical-chronological, historical-genetic, historical-typological and biographical methods. An information base used by the author includes: published correspondence of historians, other sources of personal origin, some of their scientific works, as well as the historiographical tradition of studying the topic, represented by key special scientific works authored by modern Ukrainian researchers. The author’s research determines that scientific contacts between Dmytro Yavornyts’kyi and Dmytro Bagaliy were focused on: exchange of scientific literature, organization and holding of archaeological artifacts exhibitions during various scientific events, cooperation on archaeology, museum and archival work, as well as intellectual support of each other’s scientific efforts and important achievements. It is noted that their epistolary and personal scientific relationships were not very stable. There were periods of increased intensity (the period of archeological congresses in Ukrainian cities at the turn of two centuries, as well as the 1920s), and peculiar declines in scientific communication (between 1906 and 1918). The author also have found that there were some minor misunderstandings between historians. As a conclusion, the author emphasizes, that Dmytro Yavornyts’kyi and Dmytro Bagaliy can hardly be classified as likeminded scientists on key topics of historical sciences of Ukrainе. They have never been close in the methodological, spiritual and mental sense. However, they vividly demonstrated the possibilities of real scientific cooperation between specialists, primarily due to their significant efforts to raise Ukrainian national historiography.