Олекса Новицький та Сергій Гамченко: повсякдення науковців 1920–1930 років за епістолярними джерелами

Abstract

Relations in intellectual societies play an important role. The scientific, personal, and cultural connections had a special significance during the totalitarian era. Due to developed epistolary culture which was common among scientific environment, we now can reconstruct those connections using scientists’ letters. As an example of those scientific and personal connections the letters exchange between the member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (UAS), fine arts expert and Head of the Ukrainian Archaeological Committee (UAC) Oleksa Petrovych Novytskyi and well-known archaeologist and museologist Serhiy Svyrydovych (Spyrydonovych) Hamchenko can be presented. The letters exchange between two scientists had not preserved completely. The fullest collection of letters is addressed to O. Novytskyi from S. Hamchenko are now stored in the archive of the academician in the Institute of Testaments of V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine. Only several short letters from Maria Novytska (daughter of the academician) and notes of Oleksa Novytskyi are stored at S. Hamchenko’s collection in Scientific Archive of the Institute of Archeology of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Some letters (including drafts written by O. Novytskyi) illustrate cooperation of two scholars in UAC, archaeological excavations carried out by S. Hamchenko on DniproHES. Scientifically interesting are the S. Hamchenko’s letters written while he lived in Zhytomyr at the beginning of 1930th. They allow understanding archaeologist’s everyday life, relations in his family, scholar’s daily routine. A central topic of the correspondence between two scientists in 1931–1932 was financial issue: pension allowance, UAS funding, Serhiy Hamchenko’s medical treatment. From Serhiy Svyrydovych’s letters we can see how Oleksa Petrovych tried to help his colleague even though being in a hard financial and political situation himself. The long-lasting absence of income and inability to solve this problem influenced S. Hamchenko’s family. All this together with renouncement to pay a pension to a former monarch’s general caused scientist’s death from starvation in Zhytomyr on 06 of October 1932. Key words: Oleksa Novytskyi, Serhiy Hamchenko, epistolary, history of archaeology, routine, Ukrainian Archaeological Committee, Institute of Manuscript.