ABOUT VIKTOR PETROV’S WORK IN THE ARCHIVE OF THE INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Since 1957, Viktor Petrov has been given an additional workload at the Institute of Archaeology – he is in charge of the Scientific Archive, which was headed by Maria Vyazmitina before him. Nadiia Linka and Seraphima Kuznetsova worked with him in the archive. Maria Viazmitina’s collection contains a poem called ‘The Archival Riddle’ (probably written by her), which most likely refers to this transfer of the function of archival management:

‘The Archival Riddle’

The three girls are archived:
There’s Sima, the chubby little soul,
And next to her is Valya, the giggling girl
And Linka – a frisky old lady.

The terrible power of tyrant over them
Maria, Ivan’s daughter!
The girls are trembling, sighing.
And swallow the dust of the archives…

Who in this dreadful imprisonment
Who will bring them comfort?!
Suddenly, with a dream of joy,
A mature cupid appeared in the front!

Face on fire, eyes are sparkling
His lips are shining with a smile.
He is on his way to the youngest
To make her fire just the same!

Tell me, reader, who is he
This silver-bearded cupid?

In a postcard from Nadia Linka dated 23 February 1962, we also can read a poetic appeal:

He’s both a writer and a linguist,
Ethnographer and archaeologist,
Always cheerful and talkative,
Always youthful at heart.

There is also a greeting card from Serafima Kuznetsova dated 5 November 1968 (postmarked):

Deeply esteemed Sofia Fyodorovna and Viktor Platonov[ich] We congratulate you on your Celebration and wish you good health, peaceful life and success in all your endeavours.
Sincerely,
S.M. Kuznetsova.

Valentyna Korpusova notes that, despite the common belief that Viktor Petrov was the head of the archive, in fact, according to the staffing schedule, in 1957-63, Nadiya Linka was the head of the archive. However, there are still a number of documents in the archive signed by Viktor Petrov. For example, he wrote a sample application giving permission for readers to work in the archive, as well as a request to the directorate to issue 4 cabinets for the needs of the archive. Halyna Stanytsyna also published his statement to the directorate about the need for the expedition collection to be checked by the archives’ staff, as well as a memo about the photographs of Taras Shevchenko’s paintings found in the collection of Oleksa Novytskyi fund.

Viktor Petrov worked in the archive until 1960. It was in this year that the Institute moved from 14 Shevchenka Boulevard (the ‘yellow building’ of the University) to a new building at 4 Kirova Street (now Hrushevskoho Street). Since then, Viktor Petrov remained a member of the Institute’s Slavic and Rus’ Department.

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Reprint (pp. 323-324) from the article:

While analysing Viktor Petrov’s letters, we found an interesting document. Serafima Kuznetsova copied a fragment of a letter from 1882 by A. (Halyna) Yurieva to Khvedir Vovk, in which she writes that in the south of Switzerland, in the town of Montreux, she met an interesting writer, a protégé of Turgenev, who was being treated here because of tuberculosis.

Apparently, when Seraphyma Kuznietsova was sorting through and inventorying Khvedir Vovk’s correspondence in the 1950s, she read a reference to a writer and her connection to Turgenev in this letter and decided that it was about Marko Vovchok (the archivist’s handwriting on the letter’s cover envelope indicates: ‘mentions a meeting with Marko Vovchok”). As is well known, the writer Marko Vovchok (the literary pseudonym of Mariia Vilinska, later Mariia Markovych) was the subject of Viktor Petrov’s literary studies. His works include the unfinished story ‘The Silent Deity’ (published in 1930). V. Domontovych also writes about Marko Vovchok’s relationship with Panteleimon Kulish in the third chapter of his fictionalised biography ‘The Romances of Kulish’ (published in 1930).

In fact, as it turned out, A. Yurieva’s letter refers to another writer, Lyubov Stechkina from the Tula province, author of the novel ‘Varenka Ulmina’, dedicated to Ivan Turgenev. The writer was known for his patronage of young female writers.

The history of the family of K. Yuriev and Anna (or Halyna?) Yurieva still requires additional research. In Yevhen Chykalenko’s Memoirs, we read:
‘Kuzma [Antin Liakhotskyi] was terribly homesick abroad and wanted to return to Ukraine, so that he could at least die at home, as a guard at Shevchenko’s grave. But his dreams did not come true, and he died in Geneva, because soon a terrible stolypinist reaction came to Russia, and Kuzma could not return to Ukraine.

Before his death, he took all of Drahomanov’s editions to Dr Yuriev, who had his own villa near Lausanne.’

Therefore, the Yuriev family probably belonged to the circle of the ‘Young Hromada (Community)’ that emerged in the early 1870s, namely the part of it that emigrated to Switzerland and united there with representatives of the ‘Old Hromada (Community)’ Mykhailo Drahomanov and Khvedir Vovk.

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Oleksandra Buzko