O. Barvinskyi and O. Konyskyi: on History of Cooperation

The research, based on the epistolary data, memoirs and articles, deals with the almost fortyyear long history of business and friendly relations between O. Konyskyi and O. Barvinskyi. Being citizens of the antagonistic empires, they tried to bring the inhabitants of the Dnieper Ukraine and Western Ukraine territories closer by means of the cultural and editorial projects. During the last decades of the 19th century O. Konyskyi and O. Barvinskyi actively participated in cultural, educational, social, and political life of Ukrainians. They had managed to start a number of projects that considerably changed the cultural and educational landscape of Ukraine. They took an active part in the establishment and subsequent reformation of Shevchenko Scienti c Society in Lviv, which became the prototype of the national academy of sciences; they contributed to development of such editorial projects as “Pravda” and “Ruska istorychna biblioteka”; moreover, they published a range of school textbooks in the Ukrainian language. The paper also covers their active participation in establishing the Department of the Southern Europe history in Lviv University and their attempts to popularize and implement the ideas of the ‘new era’. Sometimes they sacri ced their own plans and even reputation realizing the projects that weren’t popular among the contemporary public but promised great prospects for Ukrainians in general. Therefore, O. Konyskyi and O. Barvinskyi were ful lling a very ambitious task of gaining the unity of the Ukrainian state and ensuring the possibilities for the national, cultural and educational evolution of Ukrainian society.