Vasily Nimchuk as the publisher of ancient Ukrainian handwrit ten sousrces and a paleographs

The aim of the work is to present one of the many areas of scientific works of Vasily Vasilyevich Nimchuk (1933-2017), a correspondent member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, doctor of Philological Sciences, professor, as well as his publishing activity. Methodology of the research is based on the application of common scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, historical and linguistic methods and bibliographic analysis. Scientific novelty of the work lies in a comprehensive assessment of the publishing activities of V. V. Nimchuk in publishing the old Ukrainian and Old Slavonic (Church Slavonic) manuscripts and in representing him as a paleographer. In particular, having analyzed the numerous editions of written monuments, we can state that in the process of preparing the texts for printing V. V. Nimchuk submitted not only extensive linguistic studies of the linguistic features of the text, but also its paleographic and codicological characteristics. He proposed archaeographic work with the latest sources to designate «neography» as a discipline. Contributing to the study and publication of ancient Ukrainian texts by other researchers, the scientist created the «Rules for the publication of the texts written in Ukrainian and Church Slavonic in Ukrainian version» for editors, which is ised by researchers in preparing old texts for publication. Conclusions. The scientific contribution of Vasil Nimchuk to Ukrainian Cyrillic, generally Slavic paleography in the publication of medieval Ukrainian texts, the study of their writing and language is practically unexplored aspect of his work in the direction of attribution carried out by the scientist before writing and localizing manuscript sources. Achievements of V. Nimchuk as a paleographer is scattered over many of his works; they require a careful analysis and correct scientific evaluation.