WARSAW ARCHIVE OF IVAN AND YURI LYPA AS A HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCE

Abstract

This article provides a detailed analysis of the archive of Ivan Lypa (1865–1923) and Yuri Lypa (1900–1944), the representatives of Ukrainian medicine, political and literary processes, which are stored in the Public Library of Warsaw.
“Ivan and Yuri Lypa’s archive” of the Public Library of Warsaw contains personal documents and letters send to both as well as Ivan Lypa’s notebook and his published literary works. Apparently, the history of establishing the collection of Ivan and Yuri Lypa is connected with the work of a famous Ukrainian researcher and bibliographer Lev Bykovsky, who had been working in the Warsaw Library for sixteen years and managing it as its director for two years.
The author of the paper also defines the basic value of the archive for historical and biographical research. The materials were conventionally divided into several groups, including documentary and epistolary sources. Documental materials cover entire period of Ivan Lypa’s exile life and some aspects of the political and medical, and educational path of Yuri Lypa. Epistolary sources are related to more than 50 representatives of Ukrainian medicine, politics and literature, who lived in different countries of Europe and America, and it is a valuable source for the history of Ukrainian immigrants between the two World Wars. The most informative for Yuri Lypa’s biography and his relationships with his supporters are letters from Ye. Malanyuk, D. Dontsov and L. Lytvynovych. The topics discussed in the correspondence are an important supplement to the biographies of more than a hundred both famous and less-known figures of the Ukrainian national movement, literature and medicine.
Apart from the letters, Ivan Lypa’s archive contains a substantial number of his published works. They are stored in the form of journal prints, first collected by the author and, later, by Yuri Lypa. The son was assembling the works of his father in order to publish them as a complete compilation. However, he failed to accomplish this goal due to the little interest the publishers took in Ivan Lypa’s prose. Nevertheless, the materials remain enough printable to be published today. They are of high historical and literary value as they concern the period of the Ukrainian War for Independence (1917–1921), have rarely been used in literary studies, and are absolutely unknown to the general public.