Biographies of Ukrainian emigrants of interwar Czechoslovachchyna: silence and mystifications (1919 – 1939)
Authors: Zubko Olha ,   Vasyl’ Stus Donetsk National University
Published: July 2024

When formalizing and verifying both published and unpublished biographical data of public and political figures, scientists, and specialists, it turns out that many elements of their biographies (dates of birth and death, place of birth, social or professional status, citizenship, etc.) come from sources of personal origin – obituaries, memoirs, research publications and even Curriculum Vitae written by emigrants themselves) are strikingly differen. The network of biographical inconsistencies is explained by two reasons. Firstly, due to the natural errors of human memory, which is capable of displacing and forgetting information, and therefore, constructing one's own, i.e., a new biography. For ideological (motivated) Ukrainians who left Ukraine due to the defeat of the National Liberation War of 1919–1921, there was no question of changing or actualizing a new cultural, linguistic or professional identity abroad. Until 1925, this category of immigrants expected the fall of the Bolshevik regime and dreamed of a triumphant return home, so they did not try to integrate into the new cultural or professional environment. That is how she formed, wrote out, a unique parallel space – a wide national, public-political and cultural-educational infrastructure (professional societies, scientific institutes, educational institutions, publishing houses, magazines, etc.) – all that is identified with the Ukrainian emigration in general. Another category of Ukrainian immigrants, on the contrary, was or became apolitical and, taking advantage of the circumstances, built an individual professional career in both scientific and professional institutions of the host countries with minimal or no support from emigration organizations. So, for this category of Ukrainian natives, the «trial of emigration» became a positive impulse, because if it remained within the institutional and linguistic boundaries of Ukrainian science, politics, culture, and economy, it would not have been able to achieve such a status and level. Secondly, due to the biological mechanism of interest in this or that knowledge or the right to receive and hide information in general, in particular, and personal information in particular. If obtaining information is somehow understandable, then hiding it is another, because hiding information is a social norm of human life. A person who does not hide anything causes legitimate fears about his mental health and suspicions of a high-quality conspiracy, professional legend (legendarity). It is also important that the higher a person is on the social ladder, the more he has to hide. (Otherwise, how would she have gotten there at all?) Accordingly, the secrets of each of the social/political/professional emigration hierarchies are innumerable, like Polubotka's gold. The biography of Trokhym Pasichnyk belongs to the category of so-called mystified biographies. Among those silenced are the biographies of Petro Savytskyi, Fedir Sumnevych and Nina Dyachenko‑Hordash, Mykola Tymchenko and Mykola Skydan. The first three are silenced due to apoliticalness, a conscious attempt to take advantage of the circumstances. While the biographies of the last two are kept silent mostly due to a number of life circumstances and much less due to political cautions.