ІНТЕЛЕКТУАЛЬНА БІОГРАФІЯ ФЕДОРА ПОТУШНЯКА (1910 – 1960) – ЧЛЕНА УГОРСЬКОГО ЕТНОГРАФІЧНОГО ТОВАРИСТВА, СПІВРОБІТНИКА ПОДКАРПАТСКОГО ОБЩЕСТВА НАУКЪ, ДОЦЕНТА ІСТОРИЧНОГО ФАКУЛЬТЕТУ УЖГОРОДСЬКОГО УНІВЕРСИТЕТУ

In this article, the author tries to draw attention to the figure of the ethnographer, folklorist, writer, poet, translator, philosopher, archaeologist, and historian Fedor Potushniak, who in February of this year turned 115 years old and 65 years old since his death. Fedir Mykhailovych Potushnyak was a typical local intellectual with a dramatic fate in the tragic 20th century. Born into an ordinary rural Ruthenian family, he had good financial support from his parents, graduated from Charles University in Prague, taught for a short time, and became a conscious Ukrainophile. Despite his national-political views, the Hungarian government supported the educated intellectual, as a result of which F. Potushniak became a member of the Hungarian Royal Ethnographic Society and an employee of the state Subcarpathian Society of Sciences, which, together with the Hungarian authorities in 1941 – 1944, created an independent Ruthenian ethnic identity in the Subcarpathian territory, and from which, as early as the end of December 1944, he received a fee for his publications. A few months after being mobilized into the Hungarian army, F. Potushniak surrendered to Soviet captivity, after which, with the support of local communist friends P. Lintur and I. Kerchа, he was released from the prisoner of war camp and got a government job. The longest period of F. M. Potushnyak's life and work was associated with his work at the Faculty of History of Uzhhorod State University (1946 – 1960). During this time, the good scientist and favorite of students experienced different things: on the one hand, career growth - membership in the Union of Writers of the Ukrainian SSR and obtaining and maintaining the academic title of associate professor without the scientific degree of candidate of historical sciences, and on the other - constant public ideological harassment in anti-Sovietism and the labeling of "enemy of the people." The apogee with the fatal finale of the inhuman activities of several colleagues at the faculty and at the university was the so-called "Kushnir case" at the turn of 1959 – 1960, during which the "sexots" Wolfson, Mezhberg, Chubukov and other "good guys" achieved their goal: F. Potushniak died prematurely, not reaching the age of 50… Fedor Potushnyak left behind a solid scientific legacy: the bibliography of his works includes 267 items. Of these, more than 100 of the highest quality studies in terms of content were written and published during the Hungarian period of the scientist's life and work, when he was a member of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society and a PON employee. F. Potushnyak became a victim (not the first and not the last) of his colleagues-"sexots", and the Faculty of History, where the ideological struggle with the "enemies of the people" never stopped, forever perpetuated the bad reputation of an intellectual environment where scores are settled with dissenters who did not want to keep up with the "general line" of the party, the authorities, the state, the titular nation…