Tuchapsky, Pavlo

Tuchapsky, Pavlo [Тучапський, Павло; Tučaps'kyj], b 15 January 1869 in Besidka, Tarashcha county, Kyiv gubernia, d 4 July 1922 in Kyiv. Political leader. He studied at Galagan College and in higher institutions in Kyiv. A supporter of Mykhailo Drahomanov, he was one of the main founders of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' party and served as a delegate to its first congress in 1898, representing the Kyiv Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. In 1904 he was an activist and ideologue of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka and championed Ukrainian autonomy. In 1905 he edited the monthly Pravda in Lviv. In 1910 he quit the Bolsheviks and began working with Russian Mensheviks, which he continued to do during the Ukrainian struggle for independence (1917–20). In 1921–2 he was a librarian for the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv. He wrote articles about Drahomanov in Ukraïna (1914–30) (1926, no. 2–3) and a brochure initially published in the journal Narod (under the pseudonym ‘E.S.’) on Taras Shevchenko’s ideals and Ukrainian reality. His memoirs were published by V. Dembo in 1923.

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