Stepan Borysenok: to the Portrait of the Scientist

Abstract

The history of the law in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania has always attracted the attention of researchers. The productive period in its study was the activity of the Commission for the Study of the History of Western-Ruthenian and Ukrainian Law of All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (hereafter AUAS). The theoretical achievements of the commission are significant. Nowadays some of its members’ works have been republished with modern commentaries, and separate studies have been devoted to them. But there are such members whose works do not have any historiographical researches despite their great scientific achievements. One of them is the historian Stefan (Stepan) Hnatovych Borysenok (May 17, 1891 – November 14, 1937). Borysenok was a talented and extraordinary researcher. This article presents his biographical data as well as the theoretical achievements of the scientist are analyzed. The scientific achievements of the researcher in the field of law history are not very large. They are about 10 works (thorough scientific articles) and several reviews. They were significant for that time. However a few decades later after writing of these articles modern researchers point to a significant number of inaccuracies and errors in his works. S. Borysenok’s works were highly appreciated by his contemporaries and scientific mentors M. Vasylenko and O. Malynovsky. First of all they were impressed by the fact that he always tried to turn to primary sources and was critical to the works of his predecessors. His works show an excellent knowledge of the historiography of a particular research problem. In addition S. Borysenok being a lawyer by education was able to analyze in more details the certain problems that were not always clear to historians. The issues related to the First Lithuanian Statute and the history of the Bar in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been researched by S. Borysenok since the middle of 1920s. In particular the main subject of his research in Moscow archives was "History of the Bar in Ukraine in the 16th–18th Centuries. The special articles of the researcher are interesting and original. Among them are such articles as "Formation of a Professional Bar in the Lithuanian-Ruthenian State", "Lawyer's Fee in the Lithuanian Principality in the 16th–17th Centuries" (The latter was published in the 7th issue of the "Proceedings of the Commission for the Study of the History of Western-Ruthenian and Ukrainian Law". But that issue was destroyed). One of the greatest work by S. Borysenok concerns the history of the Bar formation in the first half of the 16th century. Also in the late 1920's the researcher had been preparing for publication a thorough work with focus on the Lithuanian Statute (history of drafting the code, sources, lists). Correspondence with Lithuanian researcher A. Janulaitis (the ancestor of the Lithuanian Statutes historiography) indicates that the manuscript of this work (or a significant part of it) probably existed. At the same time the facts of cooperation with Lithuanian historians are recorded and they give us the opportunity to hope that the lost achievements of the researcher can still be found and introduced into scientific circulation. And we are convinced that they will be the impetus for the new scientific research and will cause a significant number of scientific discussions. In the early 1930's S. Borysenok was an employee at the library. He actively worked at the acquisition of the library fund with foreign professional publications. He tried to establish and systematize international exchange. On September 23, 1937 S. Borysenok was arrested on trumped up charges of alleged involvement in an "anti-Soviet nationalist organization". On October 25 of the same year he was sentenced to death via shooting (executed on November, 14).