ANOTHER MYSTIFICATION OF VICTOR PETROV (V. DOMONTOVYCH): THE UMAN EPISODE OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE SCIENTIST AND WRITER

Abstract

The article attempts to reveal a small episode from the famous Ukrainian scientist Viktor PlatonovychPetrov’s (V. Domontovych) life. He is fairly called one of the last Ukrainian encyclopedists. The circle of his scientific interests was extremely wide, as he combined a deep knowledge in the fields of philosophy, history, archeology, ethnography, folkloristics, linguistics, etc. with an unparalleled talent as a writer. However, the era of revolutionary changes in the first half of the 20th century, the destroyed promising events of national revival in the 20s, and then the harsh terror of the 30s forced Viktor Petrov to give up his writing work, agree to cooperate with the Soviet NKVD authorities, and hide many facts from his biography until his death. Purpose. To find out individual obscured episodes of Viktor Petrov's life and his relationship with his father based on the analysis of biographical and archival materials. To publicize a previously unknown moment of Viktor Petrov's biography, related to the history of Umanshchyna 20 years of the 20th century based on the materials that are of interest rather from the point of view of local and regional history. Мethods. In the course of the research, we used the comparative-historical method in order to, on the basis of historical analogies, make broader generalizations about scattered facts from the biography of Viktor Petrov (V. Domontovych) and draw parallels with other representatives of Ukrainian literature of the era of the “shot revival”, biographical (for interpretation spiritual manifestations of his personality in his creative work), source studies (for the identification, analysis and critical selection of archival and literary sources and verification of the facts stated in them), heuristic (to put forward and substantiate hypothetical assumptions about obscured episodes from the artist's life) and partly psychoanalytic (to clarify the unconscious factors that influenced Viktor Petrov's “construction” of his autobiographical and literary discourses). Results. One of such dark episodes is related to the social origin of the scientist and writer. In order to continue his scientific career, he was forced to give up communication with his father, who in the last years of his life was ordained as a bishop of Umansky. The fate of Bishop Platon was also unknown to the general public for a long time, although his memory, as well as his grave, were preserved near church in the ancient Mishchansky cemetery of the city of Uman, Cherkasy region. The diaries of the famous Uman public figure PyotrKurinny were the impetus for scientific research, in which a mention of the visits of Bishop Platon by his son Gabriel shortly before his death was found. The study of a rather large array of biographical materials about Viktor Petrov and his family made it possible to conclude that the young scientist himself was hiding under this disguised name. And hypotheses were also expressed regarding the sources of one of his numerous pseudonyms. Conclusions. To justify their assumptions, the authors of the study delved into the analysis of the relationship between the father and son as well as into some important characteristic features of their personalities. In particular, it was observed that the father had a significant influence on his son's interest formation in scientific activity. He also thought to direct him to continue the family tradition of activity in the field of preaching and theology. However, the features of the era, the character, personal preferances and, to a certain extent, the adventurous streak of Viktor Petrov, became decisive for the difficult and ambiguous path of this definitely interesting and extraordinary personality.