Viktor Novytsky: an attempt at a scientific biography.

Abstract

Introduction. Victor Izmailovich Novytsky played a significant role in the life of the pre-war Ukrainian Academy, in the development of historical and legal science and archival affairs. He was a researcher of the Commission for the study of Western Russian and Ukrainian law of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and scientist-archivist of the Kyiv Central Archive of Ancient Acts. In 1938, the scientist was shot on falsified charges, and his creative legacy was artificially withdrawn from scientific circulation. It seems that the time has come to restore justice to the scientist and to give a proper assessment of his scientific achievements. The aim of the article. The reconstruction of the scientist's biography, clarification of the composition and evaluation of its scientific heritage. Results. The life and creative activity of V. I. Novytsky, a Kyiv intellectual in the third generation, was markedly influenced by his family and the city environment, his participation in the propaganda work of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party during his high school and university years. He was persecuted by the tsar for participating in the student movement, later became a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada (Central Council of Ukraine). Before the revolution, the researcher, doing science at his own expense, became an author оf a priority work on the history of the nobility of the 16th and 17th centuries. At the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences he prepared a number of problematic works on the history of Ukrainian law, in particular, of historiographical and methodological nature, developed the views of Mykhailo Hrushevsky on the stages of development of the law of the Ukrainian people. As a historian and archivist he was a profound connoisseur of act books, the author of interesting explorations of historical and geographical nature. Conclusion. The life destiny of V. I. Novytsky, a jurist and historian of the first third of the twentieth century, seems quite instructive, and his creative achievements are still not really appreciated. Researchers have yet to return a number of his scientific works to scientific circulation, to fill numerous gaps in the biography of the scientist.