THE ZAGREB BUSINESS TRIP OF IVAN OSTAPYK: PEDAGOGIC SOLUTIONS AND SCHOLARLY SEARCH

Abstract

The paper stresses that the cultural and literary contacts between the Slavonic peoples have, regrettably, been sporadic, for the most part; the knowledge of them being but fragmentary. According to statistics, the cooperation of the Croatian and Ukrainian peoples, hence the Ukrainian-Croatian intercultural and political ties do not claim too great an abundance in terms of bibliography and richness of events, which is, in particular, due to the historical and political circumstances of the formation of the two peoples and cultures. A significant contribution to the development of the political and cultural relations was made by the L’viv-based school of Croatian Studies. The author focuses on an important but half-forgotten episode in the Ukrainian-Croatian relations, viz. the scholarly-pedagogic activities of Ivan Ostapyk, L’viv University Lecturer, in the course of his one-year long business trip to the University of Zagreb in 1988–1989. Special emphasis is laid on his ingenious pedagogic solutions and scholarly activity, viz. the search for Maksim Bagdanovich’s brochure “Belarussian Renaissance”, Lesia Ukrayinka’s letters to Mania Bykov’ka, a Kyiv-resident girl-friend (married Beliayeva), research material on Belarussian-Ukrainian, Lithuanian-Ukrainian intercultural relations etc. The paper has almost exclusively been written on the strength of the accompanying business-trip documentation and epistolary from the private (home) archives of the Lviv pedagogue and scholar, kindly allowed for use by his wife.