«BETWEEN HISTORY AND POLITICS»: LIVING AND INTELLECTUAL SPACES OF THE UKRAINIAN EMIGRÉ HISTORIAN IVAN LYSIAK-RUDNYTSKYI (1919–1984)

Abstract

The article informs that Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi was born in the family of famous Ukrainian public and political figures Pavlo Lysiak and Milena Rudnytska. His childhood and youth were spent in Lviv, where he graduated from gymnasium and studied at the university. The outlook of the future historian and teacher was formed under the influence of the traditions of Western European liberalism. It is emphasised that I. Lysiak-Rudnytskiy always took part in public life. He collaborated with the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences and Arts in the USA and was an active member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Canada. He also showed himself as a talented journalist. Throughout his life, he contributed to Ukrainian emigration periodical publications, in particular, the newspaper «Ukrainska Pravda» and the magazine «Zustrichi, he was also an employee of «Suchasnosti». Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskiy is the author of about 200 scientific works on the new and modern history of Ukraine, the formation of the modern Ukrainian nation and Ukrainian political thought of the 19th and 20th centuries. The article analyzes such of his works as «Intellectual beginnings of new Ukraine» (1958), «The Fourth Universal and its ideological predecessors» (1968, 1977), «Notes on the problem of “historical” and “non-historical” nations» (1981), «The political opinion of Ukrainian sub-Soviet dissidents» (1981) and others. It was found that the historian expressed original opinions about the ancient and new history of Ukraine and put forward an original analytical scheme for Ukrainian nation-building. He substantiated the thesis about the «breaks», «dying and reviving» of the Ukrainian nation. At the same time, the researcher proposed to distinguish between the concept of the people as an ethnic unit and the nation as a political entity. The people are the basis for the formation of the nation. The scientist understood the content and essence of Ukrainian history as the interaction of the people and the nation. National revival of the 19th century. the scientist considered it as the beginning of the final, modern phase of the formation of the Ukrainian nation, after the princely and Cossack ones. It is noted that in his works, the professor demonstrated exceptional erudition in various humanitarian fields and examined the problems of the Ukrainian people’s past against the backdrop of world history, taking into account the methodological arsenal of Western historical science, which he masterfully possessed. It is stated that the philosophical depth and relevance of the topics, which balance «between history and politics», have assigned an important role to the works of I. Lysiak-Rudnytsky in historical science. Keywords Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, historian-emigrant, publicist, educator.