Rudynsky, Mykhailo

Rudynsky, Mykhailo [Рудинський, Михайло; Rudyns'kyj, Myxajlo], b 14 October 1887 in Okhtyrka, Kharkiv gubernia, d 23 June 1958 in Kyiv. Archeologist and pedagogue. After completing studies at Saint Petersburg University and Kharkiv University, he worked in Putyvl, Pereiaslav, and Kyiv as a gymnasium teacher (1910–17). He then worked in Poltava as a regional educational co-ordinator (1917–20), overseeing the preparation and publication of numerous children's books, textbooks, and popular works on history and art, and as the director of the Poltava Art Museum (1920–4). He was also a member of the Ukrainian Scientific Society for the Research and Protection of Monuments of Antiquity and Art in the Poltava Region. In 1924 he moved to Kyiv to become the academic secretary of the All-Ukrainian Archeological Committee (VUAK). He also was active in the Cabinet of Anthropology and Ethnography of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and helped to edit the serial Antropolohiia. Together with Mykola O. Makarenko, Rudynsky was one of the most prominent Ukrainian archeologists to support the idea of the independent development of a Ukrainian national culture even in prehistoric times. Among other important sites, he excavated and studied the Upper Paleolithic Mizyn archeological site in the Chernihiv region. In 1934 he was arrested during the Stalinist terror and exiled to Siberia. He spent part of his time there (1940–4) as the director of a regional studies museum in Vologda. In 1944 Rudynsky returned to Kyiv and resumed his scholarly work with the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. His major work, Kam’iana Mohyla, on the Kamiana Mohyla site in the Melitopol region was published posthumously in 1961.

[This article was updated in 2020.]