FEDIR DANYLOVYCH OVCHARENKO: SCIENTIST AT POWER

Abstract

The article is a scientific attempt of scientific highlighting of academic Fedir Ovcharenko’s activity (1913–1996) as the representative of Soviet Party nomenclature of the Ukrainian SSR of mid-1950th – beginning 1970th. Methodological form of biographical installation was chosen for processing the available resources. On basis of “Memoirs” of the scientist, a chemist by profession and a party and government leader, as well as a set of other sources the stages of his professional, intellectual and party and political biography were determined. F.D. Ovcharenko’s vision of Ukrainian cultural problems in terms of the communist regime, Khrushchev’s thawing, Brezhnev’s standstill period, in particular, the issues of functioning of native language, national literature, cinema art in Ukraine. Examples of relations with Ukrainian artists and public figures were given. Prerequisites for further, deeper prosopographic studies of his life and activity were created. The author concludes that in spite of high-ranking official positions and life challenges, arising in the process of this peculiar experiment of bringing the highly intellectual scientist to power, F.D. Ovcharenko did not change his purpose in life – serving to science and Ukraine. The situation that arose for him, a high-ranking official, in the conditions of the system existing in the Soviet Union, involved a difficult, sometimes conflicting interaction of his social and cultural knowledge, his own values and identities with the party-state structures and their leaders. The author tries to understand and generalize the essence of the immanent conflict between science and power in the Soviet period of Ukrainian history.