Batanova Tetyana

Documents on the History of the Jewish Representation and the Activity of the Jewish Parties in the Ukrainian Central Rada: Memoirs and Literary Works of Political and Public Figures

Abstract: The purpose of the publication is to analyze the informational potential of such materials of personal origin as memoirs and literary works, written by the Jewish political and public figures right after the events of 1917–1918, when five Jewish political parties were actively engaged in the work of the Ukrainian Central Rada and establishing the Jewish representation in the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The methodology of the research includes the use of analytical, historical comparative, causal and other general scientific methods, as well as methods of document studies, source studies and text analysis (discourse analysis, historical, biographical). The scientific novelty of the research is in studying and analysis of the informational potential of the materials of personal origin, written by the Jewish political and public figures right after the revolutionary events of 1917–1918. Besides the materials in Ukrainian and Russian, Yiddish memoirs and literary works are worth special attention; part of them was translated and thus brought to academic circulation in the recent years. Conclusions. The article offer review and analysis of the informational potential of memoirs of the direct participants of the revolutionary events in the time of the Ukrainian Central Rada: Head of the General Secretariat Volodymyr Vynnychenko, first minister in the Jewish Affairs Moses Zilberfarb and political figures Abraham Revutsky, Oleksii Goldenveyzer, Solomon Goldelman and Arnold Margolin, as well as Yiddish works of public figures and writers who lived in Ukraine in those years – autobiographical satirical novel Travels of Benyomin the Fourth: from the Ukrainian Chaos by Der Tunkeler (New York, Warsaw, 1920) and utopian novel of Ben-Yaakov In the Future City of Edenia (Kharkiv, 1918). The documents of personal origin significantly complement the set of sources for research of that epoch, since it allows not only supplement the sources for the history of the Jewish representation and activity of the Jewish parties in the Ukrainian Central Rada, but also extends researchers’ notions about international relations, revolutionary everyday life, and perception of the Ukrainian Central Rada policy by common citizens.

Keywords: documents, Jewish political parties, Jewish representation, the Ukrainian Central Rada, memoirs, literary work.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/np.65.026     Citation

• Batanova Tetyana (V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Ukraine, Kyiv, batanova@nbuv.gov.ua) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8407-9649

Cite:
Batanova Tetyana (2022). Documents on the History of the Jewish Representation and the Activity of the Jewish Parties in the Ukrainian Central Rada: Memoirs and Literary Works of Political and Public Figures. Academic Papers of The Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, (65) 26-38. (In Ukrainan). doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/np.65.026

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