Voloshchenko Stanislav, Okhrimenko Oleksandr

Linguist Ivan Zavadovsky as a researcher of Apostolus Christinopolitanus of the 12th century

Section: Biographical research

Abstract: This study is dedicated to a less-known researcher of 12-century Apostolus Christinopolitanus Ukrainian linguist Ivan Ivanovych Zavadovsky (1887-1932). The article aims to study the life path and scientific and educational activity of Professor Ivan Zavadovsky of the Public Education Institute of Dnipropetrovsk. The methodology of this scientific research is based on the principles of scientific objectivity, systematicity, and historicism. To realise the outlined goal, general historical methods are used: chronological, problem-thematic, archival heuristics, biographical, prosopographic, and retrospective. The scientific novelty of the stated problem lies in the rethinking of the activity of a linguist basedon facts and source materials that are still little known to the public. The biography of Ivan Zavadovsky is considered in the context of the turbulent historical era of the last quarter of the 19th – the first quarter of the 20th century, and the light of his scientific output. Conclusions. The article authors have rediscovered and for the first time analysed in detail the Zavadovsky archival documents enriching the information about scientific and teaching activities and thus correcting in accuracies in the previous constructions of the professor’s biography. The paper studies Zavadovsky’s unpublished manuscript excerpts from the Apostolus Christinopolitanus, which the linguist copied in the first third of the twentieth century and left the comments to them. The research proves that the Soviet authorities had repressed the scientist because of his linguistic studies. His works were criticised by colleagues and labelled with so-called ‘bourgeois theories’ and ‘bourgeois nationalism’ in particular “Fundamentals of Linguistics”. The persecution of Professor Ivan Zavadovsky affected his health and led to his premature death at the age of 45. The Soviet penal system destroyed the memory of the scientist, especially his original output, which cannot be found today. As a result, the paper rethinks this iconic figure in the history of Ukrainian linguistics and writes his biography in a new way.

Keywords: Ivan Zavadovsky, Apostolus Christinopolitanus, linguistics, philology, biography, archaeography, historical memory.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.26.173     Citation

• Voloshchenko Stanislav (Bibliographical Society of America (Istanbul, Turkey), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7081-5358
• Okhrimenko Oleksandr (University of Birmingham (Birmingham, United Kingdom), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5646-4133

Cite:
Voloshchenko Stanislav (2025). Linguist Ivan Zavadovsky as a researcher of Apostolus Christinopolitanus of the 12th century. Biographistica Ukrainica, (26) 173-195. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.26.173

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