Dnipropetrovsk Slavist Historians of 1960–1980s in the memoirs of Professor Father Yurii Mytsyk

Abstract

This publication presents two memoirs of Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Yurii Mytsyk. The memoirs are devoted to Dnipropetrovsk historians, specialists in Slavic history of the late 1960–1980s.The purpose of the publication is to introduce the memoirs into scientific circulation and to expand the source base for the study of Soviet historiography of the 1960–1980s. The first teхt is dedicated to Oleksandr Krupkin, who in the early 1970s worked at the Department of General History and studied the views of British historiography on the Polish question during World War II. The author of the memoirs notes that this topic was of a deeply opportunistic nature and by the time, when the work was completed, it had lost its political relevance, that is why the author could not find a specialized scientific council that could accept it for defense. Krupkin's research was also hampered by unsettled everyday life – the lack of own housing, when the scholar’s family lived far outside the city. Hence the historian was forced to leave the university and move to the village where he taught history, and later became a school principal. The other text is devoted to other Polish history researchers of the Department of General History. This block includes memories about the founder of the direction of historical Polonistics Valeriy Novodran and his graduate students (except for O. Krupkin) who later worked at the Department of General History. Yurii Mytsyk notes that due to objective circumstances, most of them left the Department of World History in the first half of the 1970s, some of them went to higher educational institutions in Zaporizhzhia. The importance of these memories is that they demonstrate the influence of external factors on the formation and disbanding of the scientific direction of historical Polonistics in Dnipropetrovsk State University.