Bohatsky, Pavlo

Bohatsky, Pavlo [Богацький, Павло; Bohac'kyj], b 17 March 1883 in Kupyn, Podilia gubernia, d 22 December 1962 in Thirroul, New South Wales, Australia. Journalist, literary scholar and critic, bibliographer, and civic leader; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Bohatsky founded the journal Ukraïns’ka khata in Kyiv in 1909 and edited it until 1914, when he was arrested and exiled to the Naryn region in Kyrgyzstan. In 1917 he was appointed chief of the militia in Kyiv, and under the Directory of the Ukrainian National Repubic he was the city commander and otaman of the Battalion for the Defense of the Republic. He emigrated to Prague in 1922, where he edited the journal Nova Ukraïna (Prague) and, in 1926, directed the Ukrainian Public Publishing Fund and served on the Council d Elders of the People's Ukrainian Council. From 1930 he taught at the Ukrainian Institute of Sociology. He began writing in 1906, and his work was published in many Western Ukrainian and émigré journals. He is the author of two collections of short stories—Kameliï (Camellias, 1919) and Na shliakhu do osvity (On the Road to Education, 1941)—and of a short novel, Pid bashtoiu iz slonovoï kosty (Under the Ivory Tower). He also compiled bibliographies, including Materiialy do krytychnoho vydannia tvoriv Hryhoriia Chuprynky (Materials for a Critical Edition of the Works of Hryhorii Chuprynka, 1926). In 1949 he emigrated to Australia, where he was active in the Ukrainian community as a journalist and lecturer.

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