Tyshchenko, Yurii

Tyshchenko, Yurii [Тищенко, Юрій; Tyščenko, Jurij; pseudonyms: Yu. Siry, Yu. Azovsky, Halaida, O. Kadylo, Yu. Soltychynsky], b 22 April 1880 near Berdiansk, Tavriia gubernia, d 28 November 1953 in New York, New York State, USA. Writer, journalist, publisher, and bookseller; full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US. Threatened with imprisonment for his involvement in the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party, he fled to Lviv in 1907. After returning illegally to Kyiv under the assumed name P. Lavrov, he established the Dzvin publishing house there in 1907 together with Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Lev Yurkevych, ran the Lan publishing house (1909–14), served as managing editor of Selo (1909–11), and coedited Zasiv (1911–12) and Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1911–14). He also opened bookstores in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Katerynoslav to sell publications of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and contributed to periodicals such as Ridnyi krai, Rada (Kyiv), Ukraïns’ka khata, the children’s magazine Moloda Ukraïna, Dzvinok, and Dzvin (Kyiv). In 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War, Tyshchenko visited the United States and worked as an editor for the Prosvita society in Jersey City. Following the February Revolution of 1917 he published educational materials and journals (eg, Svitlo (Kyiv), Ukraïns’ka shkola) in Kyiv and edited Vistnyk Heneral’noho Sekretariiatu Ukraïny (1917–18), the official organ of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada. In 1919 he re-established the Dzvin publishing house in Vienna and published numerous textbooks that were shipped to Ukraine and used in elementary schools until 1925, as well as a collection of his own novellas (1920). As a postwar refugee in the displacement persons camps in Germany, he published a printing handbook (1948), wrote memoiristic articles, and headed the Association of Ukrainian Writers for Children and Youth (OPDL). He emigrated to the United States in 1950, and there he published more children’s books and, together with A. Bilous, a 12-volume collection of works by Lesia Ukrainka; contributed to Svoboda (USA); and again headed the OPDL.

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