Soviet Ukrainian Germanistics in Personal Dimension: Memoirs of Professor Yuri Mytsyk about Anatolii Zavialov

Abstract

The publication presents the memoirs of professor, Father Yuri Mytsyk about Soviet Ukrainian germanist Anatolii Zavialov. Yuri Mytsyk worked with Anatolii Zavialov at the same department from 1974 till 1989, and from 1975 carried out the duties of his deputy. Zavialov’s academic life and his teaching career in 1960s-2000s was connected to Dnipropetrovsk university. At that time Zavialov actively studied the contemporary history of the German Democratic Republic, he was the author of many articles, including texts in prominent scientific journals, tutorials and published two monographs. He was one of the few Soviet germanists, who had business trips not only to the German Democratic Republic, but also behind the “Iron Curtain”. Zavialov also had the experience of teaching in the universities abroad. As the head of the department of world history, Zavialov made efforts to form a research direction in historical German studies at the university. The majority of dissertations, defended under his scientific supervision, were devoted to German history of the XXth century. Some of his graduate students-germanists continued their career at the department, and it became possible to create a strong center of German studies and turn the department of world history into a center of historical germanistics. To provide the opportunities to publish research in German history, in 1973 the scientific edition “The Questions of German History” was founded at the department of world history of Dnipropetrovsk national university, later it received the status of inter-university scientific edition. Articles here were published by historians-germanists from Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the study of the history of the German Democratic Republic went bankrupt and Zavialov turned to the history of German diaspora in Ukraine. He focused on political history of the German colonies at the beginning of the XXth century and the questions of the history of colonization in civilizational dimension. The last years of the historian`s life were over shadowed by a sharp deterioration of health and decline in scientific activity.