Nis, Stepan

Nis, Stepan (Ніс, Степан; pseud: S. Voloshyn), b 6 May 1829 in Ponory, Konotop county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 19 December 1900 in Horodnia, Chernihiv gubernia. Ethnographer and writer. After graduating from Kyiv University (1854) he served as a physician in Chernihiv and was exiled in 1863 to Novgorod gubernia for ‘distributing Little Russian propaganda.’ In 1871 he settled in Horodnia, where he practiced medicine and devoted himself to ethnographic studies. His folkloric materials were published in Chernigovskie gubernskie vedomosti and Amvrosii Metlynsky's, Pavlo Chubynsky's, and Matvii Nomys's collections. Only some of his short stories, about serfs and Cossacks, appeared in his lifetime, in Osnova (Saint Petersburg), Chernigovskii listok, and Kievskaia starina. Nis also wrote several popular brochures on home medical care (1874) and folk remedies (1875).

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