Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia

Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia (HRM). A literary and educational society established in June 1848 in Lviv by the Supreme Ruthenian Council. Modeled on Serbian (1826), Czech (1831), and other similar predecessors, the HRM fostered schooling and general cultural enlightenment by publishing popular-science literature, grammars, and textbooks. Rev Mykhailo Kuzemsky was its first head. In 1850 it had 193 dues-paying members, 69 of whom were priests. In 1861 its statute was ratified. In the 1860s it was taken over by the Russophiles (Yakiv Holovatsky, Antin Petrushevych, B. Didytsky, and others), who promoted the use of the artificial, bookish yazychie language and later even Russian. Consequently, the Galician populists founded the Prosvita society in 1868. The activity and influence of the HRM declined in the 1880s, but it continued to exist (with periods of inactivity, 1895–1900, 1909–22) until 1939. The HRM published about 60 books (15 in 1848–50, 15 in 1850–61, 26 in 1862–99, 4 in 1900–39). It also published scholarly serials: Galitskii istoricheskii sbornik (3 vols, 1853–60), Naukovyi sbornik (4 vols, 1865–8), Literaturnyi sbornik (15 vols, 1869–73, 1885–90, 1896–7), and Nauchno-literaturnyi sbornik (8 vols, 1901–2, 1904–6, 1908, 1930, 1934).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bendasiuk, S. 'Ucheno-literaturnoe obshchestvo Galitsko-russkaia Matitsa vo L' vove (proshloe i nastoiashchee),’ Nauchno-literaturnyi sbornik Galitsko-russkoi Matitsy, 7 (1930)
Pashaeva, N.; Klimkova, L. ‘Galitsko-russkaia Matitsa vo L' vove i ee izdatel' skaia deiatel' nost',’ Kniga, 34 (Moscow 1977)

Ivan Myhul

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]