Borschak, Elie

Borschak, Elie [Борщак, Ілько; Borščak, Il'ko], b 19 July 1892 in Nahartav sloboda, Kherson gubernia, d 11 October 1959 in Paris. Historian and civic figure in France, full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Borschak studied law and history at Kyiv University, in Saint Petersburg, and at Odesa University. He travelled as secretary of the Ukrainian National Republic delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and remained in France thereafter. In France he discovered the papers of Hryhor Orlyk and the diary of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk in 1920, P. Orlyk’s ‘Deduction des droits de l’Ukraine’ and the 1710 Constitution of Bendery in 1922, and Voltaire’s notes to his history of Charles XII. An adherent of the democratic left, Borschak helped organize the Union of Ukrainian Citizens in France and edited its newspaper Ukraïns'ki visty (1926–9). From 1939 to 1957 he taught at the Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris. From 1949 to 1953 he edited the Paris-based journal of Ukrainian studies, Ukraïna (Paris). Borschak wrote over 400 studies and articles, primarily on 18th-century Ukraine and on Franco-Ukrainian relations. His important works are Le mouvement national ukrainien au XIXe siècle (1930); La vie de Mazeppa (with R. Martel, 1931); Velykyi mazepynets' – Hryhor Orlyk (The Great Mazepist – Hryhor Orlyk, 1932); Ivan Mazepa (1933); Shevchenko u Frantsiï (Shevchenko in France, 1933); L’Ukraine dans la littérature de l’Europe occidentale (1935); Napoleon i Ukraïna (Napoleon and Ukraine, 1937); Karpats'ka Ukraïna v mizhnarodnii hri (Carpatho-Ukraine in International Diplomacy, 1938); L’Ukraine àa la Conférence de la Paix 1919–1923 (1938); Voinarovs'kyi, sestrinok Ivana Mazepy (Andrii Voinarovsky, the Nephew of Ivan Mazepa, 1939); Lectures ukrainiennes (1946); and Hryhor Orlyk, France’s Cossack General (1956).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]