Documentary sources in the domestic and foreign archival institutions regarding the life and work of Simon Petliura

Abstract

Purpose of the article. The article deals with the problem of the storage of documentary sources about the life and activities of the Director of the Directorate and Chief Ataman of the forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic Symon Petliura in domestic and foreign archival institutions. Methodology. Realizing that the figure of S. Petliura remains controversial in historiography and the perception of society, the author has set out to show that only using studying diverse, previously unknown archival documents and materials one can refute scientific and ideological stereotypes and traditional postulates and convey contemporaries and future generations are true testimonies. The scientific novelty of the obtained results consists in the comprehensive coverage of the available archival documents and materials that provide an opportunity to present the most objective and verified by the time estimates of personality S. Petliura showing the places of their location and conditions of storage. Conclusions. Conditions of illegal work, the dynamic course of the events of the epoch of liberation, the circumstances of emigration - all this negatively affected the preservation of documents about S. Petliura. Many of them are still not found and not disclosed. Therefore, searches in archival funds should be continued. Much of the sources relating to S. Petliura are outside our country, and it is expedient to return them to Ukraine. According to the author, the documents and materials about S. Petliura are unjustifiably scattered at various archival institutions. An urgent need is to create a separate archival structural unit, which would concentrate all source base and coordinate research work in this field. A significant practical step regarding identifying, studying and publishing materials should be the preparation of an annotated index of funds and collections of documents about S. Petliura.