Hunczak Taras

Taras Hunczak (March 13,1932, the village of Stare Misto near Pidhaitsi, Ternopil Region – July 1, 2024, United States) was a distinguished Ukrainian-American historian and public figure. He served as Professor at Rutgers University and earned the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Throughout his career, Taras Hunczak actively participated in the scholarly and civic life of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. From 1984 to 1995, he served as editor and co-editor of the journal Suchasnist, and from 2004 onward he was editor of The Ukrainian Quarterly. His scholarly interests included the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1922, the political history of Ukraine, Poland, and Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
Beginning in 2014, Taras Hunczak started transferring his collection of documents to the Scientific Library of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The collection includes archival materials, photocopies, and microfilms of documents gathered by the historian from archives around the world. Among them are materials from the German Federal Archives, the U.S. National Archives, and the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv. In total, the collection includes 120 reels of microfilm and more than one thousand paper documents. Some files also contain photocopies of scholarly publications and periodicals.
The archival materials reflect Taras Hunczak’s principal research interests. Documents from the Bundesarchiv Germany include reports on Ukraine from the 1920s, materials concerning Ukrainian nationalist and communist underground movements, and records documenting contacts between the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and German intelligence services. A substantial portion of the collection consists of copies from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives related to Nazi occupation policies in Ukraine. The collection also includes materials from the Public Record Office in Kew Gardens, London, concerning the Ukrainian Revolution and Soviet-British relations, as well as documents from the Cosacica Сollection of the National Archives of Sweden in Stockholm.
These archival materials formed the basis for many of Taras Hunczak’s scholarly publications devoted to the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1922, Ukrainian-Polish relations, the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Some of the documents have subsequently been published in several documentary collections.
The book component of the Taras Hunczak Collection comprises 184 items representing 56 titles. It includes publications on the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1922, legal studies, documentary editions, and rare works in Ukrainian studies. Among the most valuable items are Ukrainskii narod v ego proshlom i nastoiashchem (the first encyclopedia of Ukrainian studies, published in St. Petersburg on the initiative of Mykhailo Hrushevskyi), Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii (a White emigrant Russian publication edited by I. Hessen and issued by the Slovo Publishing House in Berlin between 1921 and 1937), P. Khrystiuk’s Notes and Materials on the History of the Ukrainian Revolution: 1917–1920, D. Doroshenko’s My Memories of the Recent Past, M. Shapoval’s The Path of Liberation, and Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 – October 1, 1946 (42 volumes of archival materials from the Nuremberg Trials), among others.
In 2013, the Academic Council of NaUKMA awarded Taras Hunczak the title of Honorary Doctor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Taras Hunczak passed away in the United States on July 1, 2024.

The collection is fully represented in the Electronic Catalogue.
Collection Profile.