Lukashevych, Vasyl

Lukashevych, Vasyl [Лукашевич, Василь; Lukaševyč, Vasyl’], b ca 1783 in the Pereiaslav region, d 16 October 1866 in Boryspil, near Kyiv. Political activist. After working in Saint Petersburg at the Collegium of Foreign Affairs (1803–5) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (1805–7) he settled in Boryspil and founded a county school in Pereiaslav, and from 1811 he served as marshal of the nobility of Pereiaslav county. He was a prominent Ukrainian Freemason, a member of the Love of Truth Lodge in Poltava and the United Slavs Lodge in Kyiv, and in 1818 he joined the Union of Welfare in Saint Petersburg. He advocated Ukrainian statehood and political independence, and he organized the Little Russian Secret Society. In February 1826 he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg and then confined to his estate in Boryspil until the end of his life. According to some historians (eg, Mykola Petrovsky) Lukashevych was probably the author of Istoriia Rusov (History of the Rus’ Peoples).

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