Zap, Karel Vladislav

Zap, Karel Vladislav, b 8 January 1812 in Prague, d 1 January 1871 in Benešov, Bohemia. Czech writer, historian, and geographer. In the years 1836–44 he worked as a civil servant in Lviv. There he studied Ukrainian history, ethnography, and literature and had ties with leaders of the Galician revival (eg, Markiian Shashkevych, Ivan Vahylevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, Denys Zubrytsky). He published articles about Galician affairs and ethnography in Czech periodicals and wrote books on life in Eastern Europe (1843) and his travels in Galicia (1844); the travel book is a valuable ethnographic source. He was critical of the Polish landowners’ oppression of the Ukrainian peasants and considered the Ukrainians a distinct nation. He was one of the organizers of the Slavic Congress in Prague, 1848. He also translated Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bul'ba and articles by Holovatsky, Vahylevych, and Panteleimon Kulish into Czech.

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