In scientific research on the basis of analytical and synthetic criticism of the memoirs of Ukrainian scientists S. Yefremov, M. Hrushevskyi, K. Kharlampovych, A. Krymskyi, N. Polonska-Vasylenko is made an attempt to analyze the daily life of the scientific elite in the conditions of the establishment of Soviet power and to trace the influence of cultural transformations and the scientific atmosphere of Kyiv of 20–30s of the 20th century on the socio-legal status of scientists and their further destiny.In the brutal conditions of the Soviet system writing letters and memoirs, it was the only way of expressing a person of intellectual work that could not accept the loss of a sovereign right on free labor.Soviet propaganda had created an attractive image of Kyiv as an All-Union scientific center, attracting more and more attention to VUAN as the only institution capable of meeting the intellectual requirements of scholars. Dozens of emigre scholars had believed in the demagogy of the Bolsheviks, made a fateful step in their lives back to their homeland, because crossed the Soviet border was difficult to remain a rebellious person with preserved principles and views on morality, without losing their own lives. However, in such conditions there were people who, despite all the obstacles, tried to serve the Ukrainian people as long as possible in the bosom of science, to preserve its identity and historical heritage at the cost of their own lives. With the establishment of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks tried to "re-educate" and conquer the scientific elite as the main generator of democratic and national ideas for a totalitarian system. On the way to this goal, the Soviet authorities used any methods, starting with material domestic pressure, and ending with open repressions against the scientific elite of Kyiv, in order to destroying its authority as a sociocultural phenomenon. The result of this policy was a sharp decline in living standards and productivity of Ukrainian scientists, numerous repressions against so-called "bourgeois nationalists" as a symbol of the impoverishment of the Ukrainian idea. Thus, the transformation of the cultural and scientific atmosphere of Kyiv under the influence of the Soviet ideology turned it from the All-Union scientific center into the city of thousands of ruined fates.