“SIMILAR TO YAROSLAV DMYTROVYCH, I WAS A HISTORY MAJOR AT IVAN FRANKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LVIV…”. YAROSLAV ISAIEVYCH’S LETTERS (1936–2010) TO MYKOLA KOVALSKYI (1929–2006)

Abstract

The article attempts to analyse the main aspects of the collaboration of famous Ukrainian historians Mykola Kovalskyi and Yaroslav Isaievych based on their correspondence with each other. Private letters provide the most comprehensive and complete information on a person. The article discusses the meeting of the historians when they were college students and PhD students, their studies at the Department of Historical Studies in Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. The scholars’ relationship continued throughout their entire lives. Yaroslav Isaievych’s letters to Mykola Kovalskyi have been saved in the Kovalskyi family’s archive in Ostroh. Mykola Kovalskyi’s letters to his colleague are being kept in the archive of Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the NASU; they are currently being catalogued and registered, thus are not included in the study but can be used for future research. Correspondence is an invaluable source of the history of daily lives and activities of Ukrainian historians in the second half of 20th – the beginning of 21st centuries. The letters describe the circle of friendly creative relations with foreign scholars. The informative potential of print letters allows understanding the main organisational forms and developmental directions of the national historical science. The content of the letters allows clearly outlining the problems and Ostroh academy revival prospects at the time as well as the contribution of both scholars to this process. An important element of the letters is the exchanging of books and the informing about new scientific publications on history. The letters of Yaroslav Isaievych’s to Mykola Kovalskyi have been published.