Zhytetsky, Hnat

Zhytetsky, Hnat or Ihnatii [Житецький, Гнат or Ігнатій; Žytec'kyj], b 15 February 1866 in Kamianets-Podilskyi, d 8 April 1929 in Kyiv. Historian, literary critic, and librarian; son of Pavlo Zhytetsky. A graduate of Kyiv University (1890), he taught in Petrograd until 1918. After returning to Kyiv he worked in the National Library of Ukraine from 1921 as its senior librarian and from 1922 as director of its manuscript division. He contributed to the journal Kievskaia starina (KS), served as its editorial secretary in 1888, edited its Ukrainian-Russian history section in 1893–1903, and wrote many articles for the Prosveshchenie edition of the Bol'shaia entsiklopediia (The Great Encyclopedia). In 1919 Zhytetsky established an All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) journal of the National Library of Ukraine and edited two volumes of the collection Knyzhnyi vistnyk. He contributed to Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s journal Ukraïna (1914–30) when it was revived, and served on the VUAN historical commission.

His works on the social and cultural history of 19th-century Ukraine include Literaturnaia deiatel'nost' Ioanna Vyshenskogo (The Literary Activity of Ivan Vyshensky, KS, no. 6, 1890), Order Rumiantseva 1737 roku i reskrypt imp. Pavla 1800 roku (Rumiantsev’s Order of 1737 and the Rescript of Emperor Paul I of 1800, KS, no. 11, 1886). In Ukraïna he published articles on Kievskaia starina in 1883–7, while it was under the editorship of Teofan Lebedyntsev (1925), on the Southwestern Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society in Kyiv (1927), on the Hromada of Kyiv in the 1860s (1928), and on efforts to organize a historical society in Kyiv (1929). He also wrote essays on Mykhailo Maksymovych, Mykola Kostomarov, Taras Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, Anatolii Svydnytsky, Fedir Vovk, and Platon Lukashevych.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Karachkivs'kyi, Mykhailo. ‘Soroklitnii iuvilei I.P. Zhytets'koho v Istorychnii sektsiï VUAN,’ Ukraïna, 1928, no. 4

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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