Аннотация
This article is devoted to the study of the history of Ukrainian autobiography. The object of analysis is Ukrainian autobiographies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, written by well-known Ukrainian writers, ethnographers, and public and cultural figures of that time who contributed to the formation and affirmation of Ukrainian statehood. The article examines the autobiographies of Volodymyr Antonovych, Dmytro Bahalii, Oleksandr Barvins’kyi, Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Sofiia Rusova, Yevhen Chykalenko, and other well-known Ukrainians who had a clearly defined view of life and were active members of hromadas (Ukrainian intelligentsia societies) and of the scholarly and political societies of the time and who were, for this reason, often persecuted by the state. The autobiographies analysed here were among the first examples of classical Ukrainian autobiography to comprehensively reveal the life and creative path of the autobiographers. These texts were structured according to a classical scheme: family history, the birth of the author, the specifics of their family upbringing, school, and university education, their professional and social activities. At the same time, they also contained blocks typical of the description of a person’s life at that time related to the social and academic activities of the authors which centred on the Ukrainian national cause. Often, Ukrainian autobiographies of this period functioned as apologias. An important element of these texts was to leave a ‘living testimony’ to the autobiographer’s life, the lives of the people around them, the moods and interests that prevailed in the society of the time, and the socially significant events that the autobiographer witnessed or participated in.
