Rival Cultural Strategies in Ukrainian Culture of the late XVIII - mid-XIX Centuries 3 страница
Hromadas. Clandestine societies of Ukrainian intelligentsia that in the second half of the 19th century were the principal agents for the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness within the Russian Empire. They began to appear after the Crimean War, in the late 1850s, as part of the broad reform movement. Being illegal associations they lacked a definite organizational form, a well-defined structure and program, and a clearly delimited membership. Because of police persecution and the mobility of their members, most hromadas existed for only a few years. Even in the longer-lived ones the level of activity fluctuated considerably. Members differed in political conviction; what united them was a love for the Ukrainian language and traditions and the desire to serve the people. The general aims of the hromadas were to instill through self-education a sense of national identity in their members and to improve through popular education the living standard of the peasant masses. Members were encouraged to use Ukrainian and to study Ukrainian history, folklore, and language. They read Taras Shevchenko's works and observed the anniversary of his death. Each hromada maintained a small library of illegal books and journals from abroad for the use of its members. The larger hromadas organized drama groups and choirs, and staged Ukrainian plays and concerts for the public. The hromadas were active in the Sunday-school movement: they financed and staffed schools and prepared textbooks. They also printed educational booklets for the peasants and distributed them in the villages. Avoiding contacts with revolutionary circles, the hromadas regarded their own activities as strictly cultural and educational. It was only at the turn of the century that they began to raise political issues and to become involved in political action. With time a generational difference emerged among the hromadas: societies consisting of young people (secondary-school and university students) became known as young (molodi) hromadas, and those with older members became known as old (stari) hromadas.
Since most of the information about the hromadas is derived from personal recollections and police records, it is spotty and often contradictory. Some hromadas have left no trace behind. The first hromada, established in Saint Petersburg, was already active by the fall of 1858. It consisted of some former members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, Mykola Kostomarov, Panteleimon Kulish, Taras Shevchenko, and Vasyl Bilozersky, Vsevolod Kokhovsky, Oleksander Kistiakovsky, Danylo Kamenetsky, Mykola I. Storozhenko, Mykhailo Lazarevsky, F. Lazarevsky and Oleksander Lazarevsky, Hryhorii Chestakhivsky, Volodymyr Menchyts, and Yakiv Kukharenko. With financial support from the landowners Vasyl Tarnovsky and Hryhorii Galagan, works of Ukrainian writers began to be published and the journal Osnova (Saint Petersburg) appeared. Saint Petersburg became the center of the Ukrainian national movement at the time. Another hromada outside Ukraine sprang up at the University of Moscow in 1858–9. It maintained close ties with former members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. By the mid-1860s its membership, which included P. Kapnist and M. Rohovych, reached 60. It was uncovered by the police in 1866.
In Ukraine the most important hromada, the Hromada of Kyiv, was organized in 1859 by students who were active in the Sunday-school movement. It maintained close contact with the Saint Petersburg hromada. In Kharkiv a student circle that collected ethnographic material formed around Oleksander Potebnia at the end of the 1850s, but the first hromada arose probably in 1861–2. In Poltava a hromada arose in 1858. Among its members were Dmytro Pylchykov, Oleksander Konysky, Mykhailo Zhuchenko, Yelysaveta Myloradovych, and Vasyl Kulyk. Another hromada sprang up in Chernihiv probably at the end of 1858. Its most active members were Oleksander Tyshchynsky, Oleksander Markovych, Leonid Hlibov, and Stepan Nis, and its most important contribution to the development of national consciousness was the publication of Chernigovskii listok. The Polish Insurrection of 1863–4 led to a strong anti-Ukrainian campaign in the Russian press and to repressive measures by the government. Petr Valuev's secret circular prohibited the publication of Ukrainian books for the peasants. Ukrainian Sunday schools were closed down, and leading hromada activists such as Pavlo Chubynsky, O. Konysky, and S. Nis were subjected to administrative banishment. These measures disrupted the activities of the hromadas for a number of years.
At the beginning of the 1870s the Hromada of Kyiv with about 70 members resumed its leading role in the Ukrainian cultural revival. Its activities were disrupted again by the authorities in 1875–6. By this time a strong hromada had emerged in Odesa. Among its founding members were L. Smolensky, M. Klymovych, Mykola V. Kovalevsky, Volodymyr Malovany, and Oleksii Andriievsky. Most of its members shared Mykhailo Drahomanov's ideas, and some of them (Ye. Borysov, Yakiv Shulhyn, Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky) even contributed articles to his journal Hromada (Geneva). The society aided Drahomanov and other Ukrainian activists financially, supported Ukrainian publications in Galicia, financially helped talented individuals to gain an education, and distributed illegal literature. By the time it was crippled with a wave of arrests in 1879, the hromada in Odesa had over 100 members. Besides the Hromada of Kyiv this was the only hromada that lasted for several generations.
In the 1880s those members of the Odesa hromada who had avoided exile turned to purely cultural activities. They supported the development of Ukrainian theater in southern Ukraine, published collections of the best current works by Ukrainian writers, helped Mykhailo Komarov compile Russko-ukrainskii slovar' (The Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary, 4 vols, 1893–8), and made an unsuccessful attempt to publish a journal. Thanks to a more tolerant governor in the Kherson gubernia, the Odesa hromada was more active at the time than the Hromada of Kyiv. In the 1890s a student hromada emerged in Odesa but it did not survive long. The old hromada, under pressure from younger members, gradually became involved in some political activity. In Kyiv several student hromadas sprang up in the 1880s: a study circle inspired by Mykhailo Drahomanov's ideas was organized by O. Dobrohraieva at the Higher Courses for Women; a political group guided by Mykola V. Kovalevsky advocated a constitutional federation and spread propaganda among students; and several smaller circles were formed at particular schools. In the 1890s L. Skochkovsky organized a hromada of theology students, which consisted of about 30 members including Oleksander Lototsky and Polikarp Sikorsky. In 1895 a student hromada, which included H. Lazarevsky, Dmytro Antonovych, Vasyl Domanytsky, and Petro Kholodny, arose at Kyiv University. A number of other higher schools in Kyiv had their own secret hromadas. There was little contact between the old hromada, which shied away from political involvement, and the young hromadas. In the autumn of 1901, the Women's Hromada in Kyiv was founded. This clandestine women's group organized by prominent members of Kyiv's nationally conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia existed until the Revolution of 1905.
In Kharkiv there was a loosely organized, informal old hromada consisting of such scholars and writers as Oleksander Potebnia, Dmytro Pylchykov, Volodymyr Aleksandrov, Petro S. Yefymenko, and his wife Aleksandra Yefymenko. A student hromada headed by Ovksentii Korchak-Chepurkivsky and including members such as Mykola V. Levytsky and Yevhen Chykalenko took shape in 1882. Two years later a political hromada that embraced the principles of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood and of Mykhailo Drahomanov was organized by Volodymyr Malovany, M. Levytsky, I. Telychenko, and N. Sokolov. Another politically oriented student hromada was founded in 1897 by Dmytro Antonovych, Yurii Kollard, Mykhailo Rusov, Borys Martos, Oleksander Kovalenko, Bonifatii Kaminsky, Lev Matsiievych, and others. By 1899 it had over 100 members, and in 1904 it merged with the illegal Revolutionary Ukrainian party (RUP), which previously had been founded by the hromada. In Chernihiv a hromada with members such as Illia Shrah, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, I. Konoval, and Borys Hrinchenko was active at the end of the 1890s, and in Poltava a hromada was headed by M. Dmytriiev.
Outside of Ukraine a large and active student hromada existed in the 1880s in Saint Petersburg, whose higher schools attracted many students from Ukraine. Hromada members smuggled illegal literature into Russia, studied Mykhailo Drahomanov's works, organized a choir, and celebrated Taras Shevchenko's anniversary each year. In 1886 some of its members composed a political program and formed the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries. Towards the end of the 1890s an old hromada was formed in Saint Petersburg by Yevhen Chykalenko, Volodymyr M. Leontovych, O. Borodai, Petro Stebnytsky, and others.
At the beginning of the 20th century as students became more nationally conscious and politically engaged, hromadas proliferated in gymnasiums, higher schools, and universities. The Revolution of 1905 drew attention to political issues and loosened restrictions on political activity. The student hromada in Kyiv had evolved into a branch of the Revolutionary Ukrainian party by 1904 and in 1905 was decimated by arrests. It reorganized itself in the following year and fell under the influence of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party. In 1906 new hromadas arose at Kyiv University, the Higher Courses for Women, and the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute. In order to gain official recognition these societies avoided political action. The student hromada of Kharkiv (est 1907), with a membership of about 150, was a legal, chartered society. In Odesa there was a short-lived (1903–6), illegal student hromada. Outside of Ukraine the Saint Petersburg student hromada in 1903 united over 300 Ukrainian students belonging to various school hromadas into one organization. Almost all members (about 60) of this hromada, which was headed by V. Pavlenko, H. Bokii, and then Dmytro Doroshenko, were members of RUP. In Moscow the Ukrainian student hromada (est 1898) staged concerts and plays and avoided political activities. A small student hromada was organized in Warsaw by V. Lashchenko in 1901.
At the end of the 19th century efforts were made to co-ordinate the activities of the widely dispersed old and young hromadas. At the initiative of Volodymyr Antonovych and Oleksander Konysky, a conference of members of various hromadas was held in Kyiv in 1897, and the General Ukrainian Non-Party Democratic Organization was established. In August 1898 the first Ukrainian student conference was held in Kyiv and was attended by representatives of young hromadas. A year later the second conference was held. The purpose of the third conference, held in Poltava in June 1901, was to draw the student hromadas into revolutionary activity under the leadership of the Revolutionary Ukrainian party. A fourth student conference was called in Saint Petersburg in 1904.
As reaction set in and restrictions on political activity were tightened, hromada members continued to be active in various cultural societies, Prosvita societies, and other organizations until the Revolution of 1917. The traditional name hromada was later used by Ukrainian émigrés, particularly students, for their organizations.
Hromada of Kyiv. The most active and enduring hromada in Russian-ruled Ukraine. It was not only the chief cultural, and to some extent political, society of Ukrainian intelligentsia in Kyiv but also, through its contacts with similar societies in other cities, the most important catalyst of the Ukrainian national revival of the second half of the 19th century. Although accounts vary, it was founded probably in 1859 mostly by students who felt morally obligated to improve the condition of the people through education. The first period of the hromada's history (1859–63) was devoted primarily to teaching at Sunday schools. The students who taught at the Novoe Stroenie School—O. Stoianov, Pavlo Chubynsky, V. Torsky, and the Syniehub brothers—were among the hromada's founders. At the end of 1860 or the beginning of 1861 a khlopoman group consisting of Volodymyr Antonovych, Tadei Rylsky, Kostiantyn Mykhalchuk, Borys Poznansky, F. Panchenko, and others joined the hromada. The society did not have a clearly defined program or structure. As stated in its public declaration, ‘Otzyv iz Kieva’ (A Reply from Kyiv, published in Russkii vestnik [1862]) signed by 21 members, the hromada rejected revolutionary activity and supported education of the peasants, the development of the Ukrainian language and literature, and separatism. In 1862, at the height of its activity, the hromada's membership reached 200, and included representatives from various social strata—the peasantry, Cossacks, clergy, civil servants, burghers, and landowners—and from different nationalities—Jews and Poles as well as Ukrainians. After closing down the Sunday schools in August 1862, the authorities officially banned the hromada at the beginning of 1863. Nevertheless for a whole year it continued some of its activities, such as studying ethnography, customary law, and geography and preparing books for the masses. At the end of 1863 and the beginning of 1864 its members published a handwritten satirical magazine Pomyinytsia that contained information about the hromada's membership and activities. When the use of Ukrainian in print became severely restricted by Petr Valuev's circular, the hromada's level of activity declined.
The hromada renewed its activity in 1869. Its ranks were strengthened by the influx of new members, and included such cultural activists as Volodymyr Antonovych, Pavlo Zhytetsky, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Mykola Lysenko, Viliam Berenshtam, Mykhailo Starytsky, Fedir Vovk, Mykola Ziber, Pavlo Chubynsky, P. Kosach, V. Rubinstein, Ivan Rudchenko, Yu. Tsvitkovsky, and Oleksander Rusov. The hromada met on Saturdays at the apartments of its members. It helped young peasants to get a secondary education, and then encouraged them to work as educators in the villages. Its greatest achievement was to establish the Southwestern Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, which between 1873 and 1876 completed an astonishing amount of research in the geography, ethnography, economy, and statistics of Ukraine. Most of the hromada's members worked in the branch, among whose nearly 200 associates the most active were V. Antonovych, P. Chubynsky, and M. Drahomanov. Besides scholarly work, the hromada turned its attention to public affairs. It took over the newspaper Kievskii telegraf, which under the editorship of its members Yu. Tsvitkovsky and M. Drahomanov (1875–6) became the hromada's unofficial organ. In 1876 the secret Ems Ukase led to new repressions against the Kyiv hromada: the Southwestern Branch and the Kievskii telegraf were closed down, some hromada members (M. Drahomanov and M. Ziber) were dismissed from their leading posts at Kyiv University, and others were forced to emigrate. Under the close surveillance of the authorities, the hromada reduced its activities and limited itself to strictly cultural, apolitical goals. As a result it failed to attract members from the younger generation, which began to form its own hromadas in the second half of the 1870s. To distinguish it from the new societies, the Hromada of Kyiv began to be called the Old Hromada.
In the 1880s the hromada, led by Volodymyr Antonovych, again became more active in the cultural sphere. Its energies were focused on publishing a journal, Kievskaia starina (1882–1906), devoted to Ukrainian studies. This unofficial organ of the Old Hromada was financed by Vasyl Symyrenko, Vasyl V. Tarnovsky, and Yevhen Chykalenko. At the same time the Old Hromada built a new monument on Taras Shevchenko's grave in Kaniv and republished his Kobzar. To dissociate itself from M. Drahomanov's political ideas and activities in Geneva, the hromada, which 10 years before had entrusted him with the task of informing Western Europe about Ukraine and had provided the financial support for his publications, broke off relations with him in 1886.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the Old Hromada admitted some younger members, such as Yevhen Chykalenko, Oleksander Cherniakhivsky, Ivan M. Steshenko, Serhii Yefremov, Leonid Zhebunev, Yevhen Tymchenko, and Mykola V. Levytsky, and intensified its activities. It completed the compilation of a Ukrainian dictionary that had been carried on for many years under Volodymyr Naumenko's direction, and published it under the editorship of Borys Hrinchenko in 1907–9 (photo: title page of Hrinchenko's dictionary). Thanks to the hromada's initiative the General Ukrainian Non-Party Democratic Organization was founded in 1897.
The rise of national cultural movement in Ukrainian lands of Russian Empire provoked the appearance of Valuev Circular (1863) which initiated anti-Ukrainian campaign the Russian press and limited the use of Ukrainian language. The Ems Edict (1876) prohibited the publication of Ukrainian books, Ukrainian Sunday schools; repressions against gromada movement started. Some cultural activists were dismissed from their posts at Kiev University, some were forced to emigrate. Leading gromada activists (P. Chubinsky, O. Konysky, and S. Nis) were subjected to administrative punishment.
M. Dragomanov (1841-1895), the outstanding political thinker of liberal-democratic, socialist, and Ukrainian patriotic leader became a spokesman of Ukrainian idea in exile, promoting Ukrainian ethnic, cultural, and educational policy in the Western Europe. Scholar, civic leader, publicist, political thinker. Born into a gentry family of Cossack origin, Drahomanov studied at Kyiv University, where in 1864 he became privat docent, and in 1873, docent, lecturing on ancient history. While pursuing an academic career, Drahomanov rose to a position of leadership in the Ukrainian secret society the Hromada of Kyiv (later known as the Old Hromada) and took part in its various activities, such as the transformation of the Southwestern Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society into a center of Ukrainian studies and the editing of the daily Kievskii telegraf. During his trips abroad Drahomanov established contacts with Galician Ukrainians; under his influence the Russophile Academic Circle in Lviv associated with the journal Druh adopted a Ukrainian democratic platform in 1875–6. Among the Russian educated public Drahomanov attracted attention with his articles (in Vestnik Evropy and elsewhere), in which he critically discussed Russia's internal and foreign policies.
Drahomanov became an early victim of anti-Ukrainian repressive measures by the Russian government and was dismissed in 1875 from the Kyiv University. Entrusted by the Hromada with the mission to become its spokesman in Western Europe, he settled in Geneva in 1876. Aided by Antin Liakhotsky (Kuzma), he published the journal Hromada (Geneva) (5 vols, 1878–82), the first modern Ukrainian political journal, and a number of pamphlets, mostly in Russian. With Serhii Podolynsky and Mykhailo Pavlyk, who for some time joined him in Switzerland, Drahomanov formed the Geneva Circle, an embryo of Ukrainian socialism. He strove to alert European opinion to the plight of the Ukrainian people under tsarism by pamphlets and articles in the French, Italian, and Swiss press. Drahomanov also played a prominent role in the Russian émigré community; he edited Vol’noe slovo, the organ of the zemstvo liberals. His contacts extended to Polish, Jewish, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Rumanian radicals and groups.
In 1886 a rift occurred between Drahomanov and the Hromada of Kyiv; the latter felt that political activity abroad might provoke increased anti-Ukrainian repression. The socialist stance adopted by Drahomanov in exile was often at variance with the moderate views of the Hromada members. Drahomanov also antagonized Russian émigré factions by his constitutionalism and sharp criticism of the Russian revolutionaries’ dictatorial proclivities and covert chauvinism. In Galicia, too, Drahomanov’s followers (Ivan Franko, Pavlyk, Ostap Terletsky) suffered persecution from the Austro-Polish administration and ostracism from the local clerical-conservative Ukrainian society. By the mid-1880s Drahomanov found himself in isolation and deprived of Hromada’s financial support.
In 1889 Drahomanov accepted a professorship at Sofia University. During his last years he saw the rise of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical party, founded in 1890 by his Galician followers. Drahomanov was their mentor through his intensive correspondence and programmatic articles in the party's organ, Narod. He also contributed to the London monthly Free Russia, edited by Sergei Kravchinsky (Sergius Stepniak). Soon after his move to Bulgaria, Drahomanov developed a heart ailment. He died and was buried in Sofia.
Drahomanov began his scholarly work as an ancient historian and wrote “The Problem of the Historical Significance of the Roman Empire and Tacitus” (1869). Later he worked in Slavic, especially Ukrainian, ethnography and folklore, using the historical-comparative method. Drahomanov applied folk oral literature to his study of the history of social ideas in Ukraine. His principal works are Istoricheskie pesni malorusskogo naroda (Historical Songs of the Little Russian People, with Volodymyr Antonovych, 2 vols, 1874–5); “Little Russian Folk Legends and Tales” (1876); “Recent Ukrainian Songs on Social Topics” (1881); and “Political Songs of the Ukrainian People in the 18th and 19th Centuries”, 2 vols, (1883–5).
Drahomanov was an outstanding Ukrainian political thinker. He dealt extensively with constitutional, ethnic, international, cultural, and educational issues; he also engaged in literary criticism. Drahomanov’s ideas represent a blend of liberal-democratic, socialist, and Ukrainian patriotic elements, with a positivist philosophical background. Influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Drahomanov envisaged the final goal of humanity’s progress as a future condition of anarchy: a voluntary association of free and equal individuals, with the elimination of authoritarian features in social life. He assumed that this ideal could be achieved through federalism and the self-government of communities and regions. Drahomanov insisted on the priority of civil rights and free political institutions over economic class interests and of universal human values over exclusive national concerns. However, he believed that nationality was a necessary building stone of all mankind, and he coined the slogan ‘Cosmopolitanism in the ideas and the ends, nationality in the ground and the forms.’
Drahomanov declared himself a socialist, without subscribing to any school of contemporary socialist thought. The motivation for his socialism was ethical: concern for social justice and the underprivileged and exploited. He advanced a program of concrete socioeconomic reforms (eg, protective labor legislation, progressive income tax). Drahomanov was convinced that in agrarian Ukraine socialism must be oriented towards the peasantry. Therefore, he may be classified as a populist in the broad sense of the term, although he objected to some features of Russian populism (eg, the glorification of peasant revolts and disregard for Western-type liberal institutions). Drahomanov rejected Marxism, especially the materialist interpretation of history.
Drahomanov continued the democratic-federalist tradition as represented by the Ukrainian Decembrist movement of the 1820s the Society of United Slavs, of which his uncle, Yakiv Drahomanov, had been a member, and the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. He wished to link the Ukrainian movement with progressive trends in the contemporary Western world. Drahomanov regretted that the Ukrainian people had not preserved an independent state in the past. However, he thought that a policy of separatism was unrealistic, and his philosophical anarchism did not allow him to envisage national statehood as an objective. He admonished his compatriots to concentrate on the democratization and federalization of the existing states of Russia and Austria-Hungary, which he thought would provide sufficient scope for the free development of the Ukrainian nation. He postulated collaboration with all peoples of Eastern Europe, including Russians. Yet, Drahomanov insisted on the organizational independence of the Ukrainian movement. He combated both the concept of ‘non-political cultural work’ and the Ukrainians’ participation in Russian revolutionary organizations, which alienated them from their own people.
Drahomanov’s vision embraced all ethnic Ukrainian lands. He was the first national leader to visit Transcarpathia, and he developed a lasting commitment to ‘the wounded brother’. Drahomanov envisaged a systematic co-operation among various Ukrainian lands, cutting across state boundaries. He proposed that until the overthrow of Russian autocracy the center of the national movement should be located in Galicia, where the constitutional regime offered some opportunities. It was imperative for Galician Ukrainians, however, to rid themselves of their provincial and clerical outlook. Drahomanov pleaded for secularization of Ukrainian civic and cultural life, and church-state separation. Considering Protestantism more amenable to progress than either Orthodoxy or Catholicism, Drahomanov showed interest in the emergence of evangelical sects in Ukraine. He wrote a series of tracts to encourage religious non-conformity and anticlericalism. Drahomanov consistently opposed expressions of a xenophobic Ukrainian nationalism and defended the usefulness of progressive Russian literature for Ukrainians. He maintained that national liberation was inseparable from social emancipation. He called on the intelligentsia to work for the uplifting of the masses through education, economic improvement, political participation, and the building of popular associations.
Viewing the Ukrainian problem in a broad context, Drahomanov devoted attention to Ukraine’s neighbors. Concerning Russia, he advocated a common front of moderate liberals and revolutionary socialists against autocracy, but condemned terrorist methods. Drahomanov drafted a proposal for a constitutional reorganization of Russia, 1884, with rule of law, guarantees of civil rights, regional and local self-government, and equality of nationalities. Drahomanov endorsed the right of minorities in Ukraine, particularly the Jews, to a corporate national-cultural autonomy. He welcomed the liberation of the southern Slavs from the Turks but cautioned against tsarist imperialism in the Balkans. He criticized equally the Russian oppression of Poland and Polish claims to lands where the majority of the population was ethnically non-Polish. He saw threats to Eastern Europe in Prusso-German militarism, in the inflated territorial aspirations of the Polish ‘historical’ patriots, and in the ‘Jacobinism’ of Russian revolutionary groups.
Natural sciences were less ideologically sensitive. University in Odessa (founded in 1865) had impact on scientific activity of I. Mechnikov (the Nobel Prize winner in immunology). A. Bogomolets (medicine), N. Lange (psychology), I. Sechenov (physiology), N. Beketov (physio-chemistry).
3.The second half of the XIX century was a time of realism dominance in arts. Realism referres to reality in art that depicts the visible material world as close as possible without embellishment or interpretation. It appeared in France in the 1850s as an artistic movement as an opposition to Romanticism. Critical realism was a style in arts since 1830s that exposed disillusionment with results of the bourgeois revolution and negative attitude toward the capitalism. Stendhal, O. de Balzac (France), Ch. Dickens (Great Britain) created panoramic canvases of their society. N. Gogol depicted the system of landownership and serfdom in Russian Empire. Literature of critical realism was represented by creative activity of Ukrainian writers Marko Vovchok, L. Glebov, P. Mirny, I. Nechuy-Levitsky.
Vovchok, Marko ( 1834 - 1907 ). Writer. In 1851 she married Opanas Markovych, who had been a member of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, and moved from Orel to Ukraine. From 1851 to 1858 she lived in Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Nemyriv and studied the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian traditions and folklore and wrote “Folk Stories”, which was published in 1857. It met with immediate acclaim in Ukrainian literary circles, particularly from Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish, and in Russia (it was translated into Russian and edited by Ivan Turgenev as “Ukrainian Folk Tales” (1859). In 1859, after a short stay in Saint Petersburg, Vovchok moved to Germany. She spent some time in Switzerland, England, and Italy but stayed the longest in Paris. In 1862 a two-volume edition of Narodni opovidannia was published, and individual works were published in the journals Osnova (Saint Petersburg), the monthly Meta, and the weekly Vechernytsi. . From 1867 to 1878 Vovchok lived in Saint Petersburg, where owing to the prohibition against the Ukrainian language she wrote and translated for Russian journals. She wrote in Russian “The Living Soul” (1868), “The Notes of a Participant” (1870), V glushi (In the Backwoods, 1875), and several other novels. From 1878 Vovchok lived in northern Caucasia, and in 1885–93 in Kyiv gubernia, where she continued her work on Ukrainian folklore and a dictionary. At the beginning of the 1900s she renewed her contact with Ukrainian publishers.