Yaroslav Dashkevych


Yaroslav Romanovych Dashkevych was a Ukrainian historian, archaeographer and Armenologist. He wrote over 1,700 scientific and publicist works. Dashkevych was a representative of Hrushevsky's school of history and a victim of Stalinist terror. He was a Doctor of Historical Sciences.

Biography

Yaroslav Ivan Ananiy Dashkevych was born on 13 December 1926 in Lviv in a family of war veterans. His father Roman Dashkevych was a lawyer and later a general-khorunzhyi of the Ukrainian People's Army and his mother Olena Stepaniv was a teacher and later chotar of the Ukrainian Galician Army. Both of his grandfathers were priests. On his father's side he descended from the noble Korybut family, and his maternal grandmother belonged to the noble house of Gineyt-Kuncewicz. Yaroslav received his first name in honour of prince Yaroslav the Wise.
Roman father left the family and emigrated in 1939 following the Soviet invasion of Poland, and Yaroslav stayed with his mother and maternal grandmother. After graduating the Lviv Academic Gymnasium in 1944, until 1949 Yaroslav Dashkevych studied at several institutes. During his studies at Lviv University in 1944–49 he worked as a librarian and bibliographer at the Stefanyk National Science Library.
In December 1949 Dashkevych was arrested by agents of the Soviet Ministry of State Security on the accusation of possessing anti-Soviet literature and forged documents. His mother was also arrested soon thereafter. In 1950 Dashkevych was convicted to 10 years of imprisonment and between 1949 and 1956 served his time in a number of transitional jails in Lviv, Kharkiv, Petropavlovsk and in the correctional labor camps of Karabash, Spassk and Karaganda.
After being freed in 1956, Dashkevych returned to Lviv and in 1957 was hired as a bibliographer to the Lviv Institute of Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR where he worked until 1966. While working at the institute, he defended his candidate thesis on the subject "Armenian colonies in Ukraine in sources and literature of 15th–19th centuries" in the Yerevan Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR. In 1967–72 Dashkevych worked as a senior research fellow at the Museum of ethnography and arts industries of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in Lviv. In 1973 he was a head of department of auxiliary historical disciplines. In 1974–78 Dashkevych worked as a senior research fellow at the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv. From 1978 to 1990 he remained unemployed.
With the crumbling down Soviet Empire, in 1990–91 Dashkevych headed the Lviv branch of the Archaeographic Commission of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, which later transformed into Hrushevsky Institute of archaeography and sources studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 1993 he became a leading research fellow of the Krymskyi Institute of Eastern Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Since 1990 Dashkevych was a head of the Commission of Eastern Studies of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and since 1991 – member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society presidium and a head of historical and philosophic section of the society. In 1991 he became a dean of the Lviv University department of Eastern Studies. Following Ukraine's independence Dashkevych was able to return to studies of the history of Ukraine, concentrating on military history.
Yaroslav Dashkevych died on 25 February 2010 in Lviv and was buried together with his parents at Lviv's Lychakiv Cemetery.

Works

  1. Словник польських скорочень.. Kyiv, 1959
  2. Армянские колонии на Украине в источниках и литературе XV–XIX веков. Yerevan, 1962
  3. Украинско-армянские связи в XVII веке: Сборник документов. Kyiv, 1969
  4. A Turkish Document in Ukrainian from the Mid-sixteenth Century: On the Origin of the Ukrainian Cossacks. "Harvard Ukrainian Studies", 1977, vol. 1, No. 1
  5. Древняя Русь и Армения в общественно-политических связях XI–XIII вв.. У кн.: Древнейшие государства на территории СССР: Материалы и исследования. Moscow, 1984
  6. К средневековой сфрагистике армян Украины. В кн.: Banber Matenadarani, т. 15. Yerevan, 1986
  7. Русь і Вірменія. Конфесійні та культурні контакти IX – першої половини XIII століть. . "Shevchenko Scientific Society Notes", 1993, т. 225
  8. Україна вчора і нині: Нариси, виступи, есе. Kyiv, 1993
  9. Ясир з України як історико-демографічна проблема. "Ukrainian Archaeographic Almanac: Nova seria", 1993, Ed. 2
  10. Русь і Сирія: взаємозв'язки VIII–XIV століть. "Shevchenko Scientific Society Notes", 1994, т. 228
  11. Боротьба з Грушевським та його школою у Львівському університеті за радянських часів. В кн.: Михайло Грушевський і львівська історична школа: Матеріали конференції. New-York–Lviv, 1995
  12. Павло Тетеря, незрозумілий гетьман. "Neopalyma kupyna", 1995, # 1/2
  13. Україна–Іспанія–Португалія у XVII ст.: контактні зв'язки. В кн.: Україна XVII ст. між Заходом і Сходом Європи: Матеріали 1-го Українсько-італійського симпозіуму. Kyiv–Venice, 1996
  14. Постмодернізм та українська історична наука. "Ukrayinski problemy", 1999, # 1/2
  15. Вірменія і Україна . Lviv–New-York, 2001
  16. Шотландія і Україна, або про межі історичного компаративізму. "Skhid-Z
  17. Dashkevych, Ya. .. Universum. 2011.