Leontovych, Fedir

Leontovych, Fedir [Леонтович, Федір; Leontovyč], b 1833 in Popivka, Konotop county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 1911 in Kislovodsk, Terek oblast, Russia. Law historian. After graduating in law from Kyiv University (1860) he lectured there (1860, 1863–5), at Odesa University (1861–3, 1865–91), and at Warsaw University (1892–1911) on the history of Russian law. He was also rector (1869–77) and prorector of Odesa University. Specializing in the law of medieval Kyivan Rus’ and the Caucasian peoples, he wrote a number of important works on Lithuanian-Ruthenian law: Krest’iane iugo-zapadnoi Rossii po litovsko-russkomu pravu XV–XVI vekov (The Peasants of Southwestern Russia in Lithuanian-Ruthenian Law of the 15th–16th Centuries, 1863), Russkaia Pravda i Litovskii statut (Ruskaia Pravda and the Lithuanian Statute, 1864), Ocherki istorii litovsko-russkogo prava (Outlines of the History of Lithuanian-Ruthenian Law, 1894), Rada velikikh kniazei (The Council of the Grand Princes, 1907), and Tsentral’nye sudebnye uchrezhdeniia v Velikom Kniazhestve Litovskom (The Central Judicial Institutions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1910). He published over 750 documents, dating from 1413 to 1507, from the Lithuanian Register.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]