THE CONTRIBUTION OF UKRAINIAN EMIGRATION OF THE INTERWAR PERIOD TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: THEMATIC, METHODOLOGICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The article reconstructs the contribution to historical science shaped by leading Ukrainian scholars and political thinkers during the period in question. Through applying Karl Mannheim’s vision of “real generations” of intellectuals, on the one hand, and his definitions of parameters of real contribution as well as role of specialisation in the framework of evaluation of this contribution, on the other hand, the author defines two generations of historians, successful in their scientific discourse.
Having analysed a range of original works by Ukrainian emigrants of older generation (Hrushevskyi, Lypynskyi, Tomashivskyi, Doroshenko), as well as the representatives of the younger generation (Krupnyckyi, Kutshabskyi, Antonovych and Chyzevskyi), the author recreates the research heritage and vision of Ukrainian and European history in its internal dialectics that were formed by scholars in the interwar intellectual environment in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria.
In addition to the identical conclusions of each author concerning the statements about the necessity and possibility to integrate the Ukrainian history into the global one, discussion of the Ukrainian question in isolation to the resolution of the Russian problem, and existence of common political language of both generations of intellectuals as emigrants in their host countries, the author formulates existing differences. The latter depends, first and foremost, on the different positions of scholars in foreign institutions: the older generation possessed the academic positions in the institutions created by emigrants; the younger – in state German, Czechoslovak or Austrian institutions. Second difference specified the specific character of intellectual concentration of the authors under discussion: speaking in terms of the understanding the experience of the failure of Ukrainian state in 1917-1920s, older scholars differed considerably from their younger colleagues, who predetermined the methodology and tasks of their research, corresponding to European countries. Third difference depends on the results of research: older researchers aimed to make contribution only to Ukrainian history; younger scholars conducted various retrospective journeys into the different aspects of medieval and new history of Germany, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
All Ukrainian intellectuals, whose legacy is prioritized and studied in the article, were concentrated on the research of the phenomenon of Ukrainian history as historical and political reality. The divergence between two different generations of Ukrainian émigré scholars lied in different significance of their contribution into the Ukrainian historical science and absence of the contribution into the global science for older scholars, different arguments put forward by Ukrainian intellectuals to support their concepts, as well as in the surroundings and circumstances of their education and research work as scholars.