Kyrychenko, Illia

Kyrychenko, Illia [Кириченко, Ілля; Kyryčenko, Illja], b 19 July 1889 in Riabukhy, Konotop county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 13 July 1955 in Kyiv. Lexicographer; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1951. A graduate of the Nizhyn Historical-Philological Institute (1914), from 1918 he worked as a teacher in Lubny and Kyiv. In 1931 he joined the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and becoming the director of its dictionary department in 1946. From 1936 he was also a professor of classical philology at Kyiv University. Kyrychenko wrote or compiled over 40 lexicographic works and edited many others. He was the author of the institute’s Ukrainian dictionary of medical terminology (1936); co-compiler of its Russian-Ukrainian dictionary (1948); the chief editor of its Ukrainian-Russian dictionary (6 vols, 1953–63; vols 2–6 published posthumously) and Ukrainian-Russian dictionary of personal names (1954); coauthor of the official Soviet Ukrainian orthography of 1946; and author of several editions of a Soviet Ukrainian orthographic dictionary from 1946, the fullest being the 1955 edition. He also founded and edited the first five issues of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR serial Leksykohrafichnyi biuleten’ (1951–5).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]