«…YOUR OPINION IS INTERESTING…, AS THE OPINION OF A TRUE SCIENTIST»: EPISTOLS B. S. BODNARSKY TO S. I.-Y. BOROVOY

Abstract

The article presents the part of the epistolary heritage of the outstanding Russian and Soviet bibliographer, ideologist of the introduction of the universal decimal classification in the USSR – B. S. Bodnarsky. The article presents for the first time his little-known historical sources. There are twenty epistles to the Soviet historian S. I.-Ya. Borovoy. Generally, the correspondence of these bibliographers is of undeniable interest in the history of Soviet bibliography in particular, and in the history of historical science. The represented epistles are stored in the State Archives of Odessa region, in the fund of personal origin of professor S. I.-Ya. Borovoy. The published ego-documents cover the period from 1952 to 1968 and are a valuable source on the history of socio-cultural life of the early second half of the twentieth century. The provided materials reflect separate fragments of professional activity of two scientists and their personal and scientific communicative communications with some representatives of the Soviet scientific community. The epistles allow us to reproduce some details of the history of Soviet historical science, certain episodes of the biographies of a number of Soviet scholars of those years against the background of socio-cultural events. The particular interest is the epistles of B. S. Bodnarsky in the context of the study of his interpersonal relationships with colleagues and contain facts for a detailed description of the academic community of the time. The epistles also contain a description of human relations, emotional feelings about certain moments that took place in the scientific environment, a description of the atmosphere of everyday life. The special value of the presented primary sources is that their content demonstrates the presence of attentive and friendly attitude between scientists. To a large extent, the personal connections of S. I.-Ya. Borovoy and an influential scholar in academic circles helped his younger colleague to overcome some difficulties and gain recognition as a scholar in the field of bibliography at the All-Union level. The publication of the letters is accompanied by quite complete comments on their content and introduces a valuable historical source into scientific circulation.