Dmytro Yavornytsky

Dmytro Yavornytsky (also known by his pen name as Evarnitsky), (November, 6 1855- August, 5 1940) was a noted Ukrainian historian, archeologist, ethnographer, folklorist, and lexicographer. He was one of the most prominent investigators of the Ukrainian Cossacks, especially the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the author of their first general history. In recognition of his manifold contributions to the preservation of Zaporozhian history and culture, he is widely known as "the Father of the Zaporozhians".

Yavornytsky was educated at Kharkiv, Kazan, and Warsaw universities but his academic career was repeatedly interrupted by the authorities for political reasons. Both as a student and later as a teacher he was accused of Ukrainian "separatism" and dismissed from his position. In the 1890s, he even was forced to go to Russian Turkestan to find employment. In 1897, the Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky helped him to obtain a position as lecturer on the Zaporozhian Cossacks at Moscow University, but in 1902, when he was offered a position as Director of the Yekaterinoslav Historical Museum in central Ukraine, he gladly accepted and remained there to the end of his life.

As a historian, Yavornytsky displayed a romantic-antiquarian approach to his subject and was a conscious follower of his predecessor, the Ukrainian historian, Mykola Kostomarov. He was an enthusiast who avidly sought out both documents and material artifacts, as well as stories and the songs of the elderly, concerning the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and he wrote his histories on the basis of this material. He was a true pioneer of Zaporozhian history and was the first to compile an extensive archive of materials on their entire history from their origins to their demise. He published much of this material in various collections, often at his own expense. His major work was undoubtedly his History of the Zaporozhian Cossacks which was published in Russian in three volumes between 1892 and 1897. He planned but never completed a fourth volume. In this and in his other works, he portrayed the Zaporozhians as representatives of Ukrainian liberty. Later Ukrainian historians criticized him as being uncritical and unsystematic in his collection of source materials (Mykhailo Hrushevsky) and lacking an appreciation for Ukrainian statehood (Dmytro Doroshenko), but Yavornytsky wrote at a time when political circumstances and the Imperial censors were extremely oppressive and any synthesis of Ukrainian history which displayed an enthusiasm for the subject, let alone political independence, was highly suspect. His History of the Zaporozhian Cossacks was a pioneering work which did, in fact, display such an enthusiasm.

As an ethnographer, folklorist, and lexicographer, Yavornytsky was similarly pioneering. He made numerous contributions to the historical geography of the Zaporozhian lands, and mapped in detail the Dnieper Rapids with the locations of the various Zaporozhian Siches, or fortified headquarters. He published a large collection of Ukrainian folksongs (1906; partly reprinted, 1990) as soon as the censor would permit it, contributed to Borys Hrinchenko's great Ukrainian dictionary, and after the revolution, began publication of one of his own (1920). He increased the holdings of the Yekaterinoslav Museum from 5,000 to 80,000 items. He commissioned the best Ukrainian and Russian artists of his time (O. H. Slastion, S.I. Vasylkivsky, N.S. Samokish, and I. Repin) to illustrate his various books, which were, in fact, sometimes works of art in themselves. Especially notable in this regard is his From Ukrainian Antiquity (1900) which was lavishly illustrated in full colour and contained parallel texts in Russian and French so that it could be read abroad.

During the repressions of the 1930s, Yavornytsky was prevented from publishing and had to keep a very low profile. During the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 he actually felt compelled to give away artifacts from his collections to obtain food for starving local peasants and others. His death passed unnoticed both in the USSR and in the wider world. But the Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipropetrovsk) Museum was eventually renamed in his honour. He was partially rehabilitated during the Khrushchev and Shelest eras, materials about him began to appear, and in the early 1970s, a four volume collection of his works was prepared for publication. Political circumstances again prevented this from happening, but with the advent of the Perestroika reforms in the late 1980s, new materials began to appear and his major works were republished. At that time, his History of the Zaporozhian Cossacks was reprinted both in Russian and in Ukrainian (1990-91). The Ukrainian edition contains numerous additional illustrations. In 2004, the first volume of his Collected Works in Twenty Volumes was published. The first ten volumes of this collection will contain his historical, geographical, and archeological works, the second ten volumes, his works on folklore, ethnography, and language. Today, Yavornytsky is still widely revered as "the Father of the Zaporozhians".