Rylsky, Tadei

Rylsky, Tadei [Рильський, Тадей; Ryl’s’kyj, Tadej], b 2 January 1841 in Stavyshche, Tarashcha county, Kyiv gubernia, d 7 October 1902 in Romanivka, Skvyra county, Kyiv gubernia. Civic and cultural leader and ethnographer; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh); father of Maksym Rylsky. During his student years at Kyiv University (he graduated in 1862) he made the acquaintance of Volodymyr Antonovych and was an active member of the Hromada of Kyiv. Rylsky became one of the cofounders of the khlopoman movement. He founded a school on his estate in Romanivka and taught there for nearly 20 years. He contributed articles to the journals Osnova (Saint Petersburg) (using the pseud Maksym Chorny), Kievskaia starina (KS), and Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka and to the Polish newspaper Głos, on economic and social issues and on the ethnography and folklore of the Ukrainian people. Among his most important works are ‘K izucheniiu ukrainskogo narodnogo mirovozreniia’ (Toward the Study of the Ukrainian Folk Weltanschauung, KS, 1888, no. 11; 1890, nos 9–11; 1903, nos 4–5), O khersonskikh zarabotkakh (About Kherson Wages, 1904), Sil’s’ki pryhody (Village Adventures, 1905), and ‘Studiï nad osnovamy rozkladu bahatstva’ (Studies of the Bases of the Distribution of Wealth, ZNTSh, vols 1–2 [1892–3]), written in the tradition of the Austrian school of political economy.

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