Revutsky, Dmytro

Revutsky, Dmytro [Ревуцький, Дмитро; Revuc'kyj], b 5 April 1881 in Irzhavets, Pryluky county, Poltava gubernia, d 29 December 1941 in Kyiv. Musicologist and folklorist; brother of Lev Revutsky, father of Valeriian Revutsky. After graduating from Kyiv University (1906) he was a gymnasium teacher until 1918, when he helped to establish and began lecturing at the Kyiv Lysenko Music and Drama Institute. From 1923 he also served as a research associate with the Ethnography Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Charges of ‘bourgeois nationalism’ in 1932 led to dismissal from his posts. Only in 1938 was he restored to an official position, as a senior research associate at the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Having missed the evacuation of scholars from Kyiv before its occupation by Nazi forces in 1941, Revutsky continued his academic work under the German regime. Both he and his wife were murdered not long thereafter, probably by Soviet agents.

Revutsky compiled a three-volume collection of Ukrainian folk songs under the name Zoloti kliuchi (The Golden Keys, 1926–9) and wrote a variety of articles on topics related to Ukrainian ethnomusicology.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]