Based on the data from the archives, which the author is fi rst to introduce to the scientifi c circulation, and a critical analysis of the literature, we observe the life’s journey of a medical doctor Ivan Mitrofanovich Lutsenko (1864–1919), whom history presents as an active fi gure in the epoch of the civil war in Ukraine. The author polemicizes with the historians, who see Lutsenko as a hero, “a new kind of Ukrainian”, and substantiates a point of view according to which, I. M. Lutsenko is an ultranationalist, Russophobe and an anti-Semite