Volkhovsky, Feliks

Volkhovsky, Feliks [Волховський, Фелікс; Volxovs'kyj], b 15 March 1846 in Poltava, Poltava gubernia, d 3 August 1914 in London. Revolutionary populist and writer. After graduating from the Richelieu Lyceum in Odesa (1863) he audited law courses at Moscow University and joined the Ukrainian Student Hromada in Moscow. In 1867, after the hromada had been investigated and banned by the authorities, he founded the Ruble Society. The society was to hire itinerant teachers to spread literacy in rural areas and collect ethnographic, historical, and economic data. In 1875 Volkhovsky wrote in Ukrainian a populist propagandist brochure for the peasantry printed by Ostap Terletsky in Vienna. Volkhovsky was often detained for investigation (1866, 1868, 1869–71, and 1874–8) and was finally exiled to Siberia. He escaped in 1889 and made his way to London, where he wrote revolutionary pamphlets and edited the monthly Free Russia. He corresponded with Mykhailo Drahomanov, Mykhailo Pavlyk, Ivan Franko, Marko Vovchok, Lesia Ukrainka, who translated one of his pamphlets into Ukrainian, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, whose Tini zabutykh predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors) Volkhovsky translated into Russian (1912).

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