On occasion of 110 anniversary of a famous poet and academician Mykola Bazhan and 115 anniversary of Uman regional ethnographer Mykola Komarnytskiy at Ukrainian Philology Department was held All-Ukrainian scientific and practical conference “Famous Uman citizens Mykola Bazhan and Mykola Komarnytskiy: life, creative work and reception”.

The name of a famous poet and academician Mykola Platonovych Bazhan is well-known; his anniversary is traditionally celebrated by Ukrainian Literature, Ukrainian Ethnography and its Teaching Methods Chair (head of the chair – professor, Nataliya Syvachuk). Mykola Komarnytskiy is, unfortunatelly, unknown even to Uman dwellers. But, as author of methodological, literary and publicistic articles Stepan Pavlenko thinks, “Mykola Fedorovych Komarnytskiy is an unusual and unique person, excellent ethnographer, a good friend not only of Bazhan, but many other writers, cultural workers of older generation. Besides, Mykola Komarnytskiy played a great role in creative development of Mykola Bazhan.

It is worth mentioning that both personalities are united by our city, as they spent their cildhood in Uman, and Mykola Komarnytskiy had been living here up to the end of his life. “We, Uman dwellers, have an incorrigible distinctive mark, -wrote Mykola Bazhan to Mykola Komarnytskiy, - all of us think that Uman and only Uman is the nub of the universe”.

The conference was dedicated to these two famous Uman citizens; at the conference took part more than 100 members: lecturers, students of our and the other universities, literature teachers of general education schools.

Uman visited two other famous writers – laureate of Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, Petro Perebyinis and periodical “Chronics of 2000” redactor, Yuriy Buriak in order to celebrate the anniversaries. Both of them told about personal communication with Mykola Platonovych, his creative works, and expressed their opinion on contemporary Ukrainian literature and cultural state.

The poems by Mykola Bazhan were declared by members of “Word Theatre”, which is the functional part of Ukrainian Literature, Ukrainian Ethnography and its Teaching Methods Chair; the poems declaring was like a tuning fork that created good atmosphere at the meeting.

We hope that everybody present at the meeting carried the symbolic branch of memory about two heroes of the anniversary, and the desire to do good, live for the sake of Ukraine.