Siropolko, Stepan

Siropolko, Stepan [Сірополко, Степан], b 15 August 1872 in Obychiv, Poltava gubernia, d 25 February 1959 in Prague. Pedagogue and bibliographer. He graduated from Moscow University, where he was an active member of the Ukrainian Hromada and coeditor of the periodical Ukrainskaia zhizn’. In 1917 he became director of public education in Kyiv. While in Kyiv he lectured at the Froebel Pedagogical Institute. He also acted as consultant to the General Secretariat of the Central Rada on educational matters. After 1921 he emigrated, first to Poland and then to Czechoslovakia. He was an active member of the Ukrainian community, in Prague in particular: he taught at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute (1925–32), he organized and was head of the Ukrainian Society of Bibliophiles in Prague and edited its journal Knyholiub, and he headed the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society in Prague and the Union of Ukrainian Journalists and Writers Abroad. He was also a member of the Ukrainian Historical-Philological Society and became an honorary member of the Prosvita society in Lviv. He wrote articles on pedagogical topics for Ukrainian- and foreign-language periodicals. His published works include Vzirtsevyi katalog shkilnoï i narodn’oï biblioteky (A Model Catalog for the School and Public Library, 1918), Narodni biblioteky (People's Libraries, 1919), Zavdannia shkoly (The Task of the School, 1919), Korotkyi kurs bibliotekoznavstva (A Short Library Science Course, 1924), Shkoloznavstvo (Pedagogy, 1926), Narodnia osvita na Soviets’kii Ukraïni (Public Education in Soviet Ukraine, 1934), and Istoriia osvity na Ukraïni (The History of Education in Ukraine, 1937).

[This article was updated in 2012.]