Tarnovsky, Vasyl

Tarnovsky, Vasyl [Тарновський, Василь; Tarnovs’kyj, Vasyl’], b 26 June 1810 in Kachanivka, Borzna county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 16 December 1866. Jurist and civic figure; father of Vasyl V. Tarnovsky. After graduating in law from Moscow University he taught at Zhytomyr gymnasium and then managed the family estate. He studied the economic condition of the peasantry in Kyiv gubernia and wrote an article on legal practice in Russian-ruled Ukraine (1842). As an opponent of serfdom he was active in preparing the emancipation reforms: he sat on the Chernihiv Gubernia Committee for Improving the Lot of Landlords' Peasants (1858–9) and on the editing committees for the reform legislation in Saint Petersburg. After inheriting his uncle's estate he underwrote the publication of Panteleimon Kulish's Zapiski o Iuzhnoi Rusi (Notes on Southern Rus’) and Chorna rada (The Black Council) and supported other cultural projects.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]