Abramovych, Dmytro

Abramovych, Dmytro [Abramovyč], b 26 July 1873 in Hulevychi, Volhynia, d 4 March 1955 in Vilnius. Literary scholar, specializing in Old Ukrainian literature; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1921. Abramovych graduated from the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy in 1897 and in 1903 became head of that institution's faculty of Russian and Old Slavonic languages. In 1909 he was dismissed from his position for alleged unreliability. During the Soviet period he was a professor at the University of Leningrad and the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute, and in the later years of his life at the University of Vilnius. His major works were Issledovanie o Kievo-Pecherskom Paterike (A Study of the Kyivan Cave Patericon, 1902) and K voprosu ob ob”eme i kharaktere literaturnoi deiatel’nosti Nestora Letopistsa (On the Scope and Character of Nestor the Chronicler's Literary Activity, 1902). Several editions of the Kyivan Cave Patericon were published under Abramovych's editorship, including an edition in the series Pamiatky movy ta pys’menstva davn’oï Ukraïny, vol IV, Kyiv 1930. He also edited Zhitie sviatykh muchenikov Borisa i Gleba (The Lives of the Holy Martyrs Boris and Gleb, 1916). Several of his articles on Old Ukrainian literature appeared in the serials of the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv and the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as well as in the journal Ukraïna (1914–30). Abramovych also conducted research on the history of 19th-century Russian literature.

Ivan Koshelivets

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]