Butych, Ivan
Butych, Ivan [Бутич, Іван; Butyč], b 21 October 1919 in Usivka, Pyriatyn county, Poltava gubernia, d 9 May 2007 in Kyiv. Historian, specialist in historical sources, and archivist; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (1990). He graduated from the historical-archival department of Kyiv University in 1945. He later defended his candidate of historical sciences degree in 1950 with the dissertation on the peasant movement in Slobidska Ukraine in the second half of the 18th century. In 1954–71 he headed the scholarly publications department of the Archival Administration at the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR. During these years, he was also editor-in-chief of the Archival Administration’s scholarly periodical Naukovo-informatsiinyi biuleten' Arkhivnoho upravliannia URSR (1958–65) that in 1965 was renamed as Arkhivy Ukraïny (1965–71). He was a cofounder and co-editor of the archival periodic collection Istorychni dzherela ta їkh vykorystannia (1964–71) and a member of the editorial board of Ukraine’s leading historical journal Ukraїns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal (1957–72). He also served on the editorial board of the multivolume Istoriia mist i sil Ukraїns'koї RSR (1971–91). For this work he was awarded the diploma of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR in 1975. After 1991 he worked as senior research associate at the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Butych authored or co-authored a number of articles on archival studies, historiography, and historical regional studies. He initiated several collections of documents about Ukraine’s most prominent intellectuals, among them Taras Shevchenko (1963), Ivan Franko (1966), and Lesia Ukrainka (1971). For his work on the publication of Oleksander Kistiakovsky’s diary in 2 volumes he was awarded the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (1998). He also participated in the publication of documents about Mykhailo Drahomanov (2001).
Over the years, Butych co-edited fundamental collections of historical documents pertaining to different periods of Ukrainian history, including Heneral'nyi opys Livoberezhnoї Ukraїny 1765–69 rr.: Pokazhchyk naselenykh punktiv (The General Description of Left-Bank Ukraine, 1765–69: The Index of Placenames,1959); Dokumenty Bohdana Khmel'nyts'koho (The Documents of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, 1961); Haidamats'kyi rukh v Ukraїni v XVIII st. (The Haidamaka Movement in Ukraine in the 18th Century, 1970); Kyrylo-mefodiїvs'ke tovarystvo, tom 1–3 (The Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, in 3 vols, 1990); Universaly Bohdana Khmel'nyts'koho. 1648–57 (The Universals of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, 1648–57, 1998); and Universaly Ivana Mazepy. 1687–1709 (The Universals of Ivan Mazepa, 1687–1709, 2002). He also co-authored encyclopedic guides of historical regions of Ukraine: Chernihivshchyna: Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk (The Chernihiv region: Encyclopedic Guide, 1990) and Poltavshchyna: Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk (The Poltava region: Encyclopedic Guide, 1992). A bibliographic guide to Butych’s works was published in 1999.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ivan Lukych Butych: Do 80-ricchia vid dnia narodzhennia ta 50-ї richnytsi naukovoї diial'nosti: Bibliohrafiia (Kyiv 1999)
Zahorets'ka O. ‘Iuvilei vchenoho istoryka-arkheohrafa I.L. Butycha,’ Studiї z arkhivnoї spravy ta dokumentoznavstva 4 (1999)
———. ‘Butych, Ivan lukych,’ in Iryna Matiiash et al, eds., Ukraїns'ki arkhivisty (XIX–XX st.): Biobibliohrafichnyi dovidnyk (Kyiv 2007)
Serhiy Bilenky
[This article was written in 2024.]