Autobiography of Danilo Bashutsky: Historical and Literary Commentary

The publication is a commented edition of Danilo Bashutsky’s (1759–1845) autobiography discovered in the collection of historian and antiquarian Pavel Tikhanov (1839–1905) in the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia. Danilo Bashutsky was a naval officer who served in various departments of the Admiralty Board and the Naval Ministry of the Russian Empire. He was also the elder brother of General Pavel Bashutsky and the uncle of the writer Alexander Bashutsky. The author kept notes for several years describing the history of the family and his life from the 1700s to 1834. In addition, the manuscript reflects the author’s ideas about the Ukrainian past, the history of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and other historical events. There are also descriptions of everyday aspects of the plague epidemic of 1770–1772, student life, and naval service. The autobiography of Danilo Bashutsky not only reconstructs the life path and history of the author’s family but also allows us to understand the intellectual environment of representatives of the Little Russian nobility who comprehended their place on the cultural map of the Russian Empire.