Labyrinths of Identity of One Ukrainian Intellectual: Ilia Barshak before Ilko Borshchak
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2020.06.139Keywords:
ego-narrative, identity, biography, metric record, institutional documentation, Jews, psychological trauma, World War I, revolution, Ukraine, France, mystificationsAbstract
The research is aiming to clarify the following features of Ilko Borshchak (Élie Borschak) life path activity, as follow: circumstances of his birth; general patterns and individual features of socialization; reconstructing the obstacles of Ilko Borshchak spatial displacements throughout his early life; discovering the network of intellectual relations with contemporaries, reading preferences and the shaping of the main ideological aspirations and life strategies of the classic of Ukrainian historiography Ilko Borshchak in the period covered la belle époque, World War I, Revolution and ending with his settlement in France in 1920.
The research methodology. The biography of Ilko Borshchak was reconstructed by comparing two dominant text projections, namely the ego narratives (1) and institutional documents (2). In contrast to his later Ukrainian ego-narrative identity, which reinterpreted and concealed circumstances of his origin, childhood, and adolescence (Erving Hoffman’s stigma identity concept), the institutional documents relating to religious, educational, military, or police aspects of Ilko Borshchak life testifies to the existence of two earlier strong sociocultural affiliations – Jewish and Russian. Therefore, the choice of Ukrainian identity was a late and rational result of the Ilko Borshchak re-identification process. Our study’s explanation strategies are well correlated with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity and the psychology of deviant behavior.
The scientific novelty. In our study, we implement modern research approaches in the field of biography and propose an introduction to the intellectual biography of Ilko Borshchak.
As a conclusion, we can conclude that Borshchak’s version of his own past was a narrative fiction constructed by Borshchak himself. Still, nevertheless, that mythological image was both uncritically and successfully integrated into historiography. Particularly noteworthy are his mystifications about the origin, education, and own participation in the World War I. According to the materials based in archives of Moldova, Russia, USA, France, Ukraine, was clarified the question of his family roots; into historiography for the first time was introduced a metric record birth of July 19 (31) 1894 in the Bălți, Bessarabian province; analyzed the documents of his personal file from 1914 to 1915 at the University of Saint Volodymyr; as well as information from the French General Security Police (Sureté Générale) and the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), including the criminal case of his father, Leon Barshak.
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