Hrushevska, Kateryna
Hrushevska, Kateryna [Hruševs’ka], b 21 June 1900 in Lviv, d 30 March 1948 in Temlaz, Far East. Ethnographer and sociologist; daughter of Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Mariia Hrushevska. In the 1920s she worked at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences as head of the Commission of Historical Songs and of the Cabinet of Primitive Culture, and as secretary of the Cultural-Historical Commission. In the early 1930s she shared her father's exile in Moscow. After his death in 1934, she resumed her scholarly work as a research associate of the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Her best work was published in Pervisne hromadianstvo ta ioho perezhytky na Ukraïni (1926–30), a journal that she edited. She was the editor of two important collections: Z prymityvnoï kul’tury: Rozvidky i dopovidi (From Primitive Culture: Studies and Lectures, 1924), with a foreword by M. Hrushevsky, and Z prymityvnoho hospodarstva (From Primitive Economy, 1927). Her chief accomplishment was the collection Ukraïns’ki narodni dumy: Korpus (Ukrainian Folk Dumas: The Corpus, 2 vols, 1927, 1931); volume three of the planned six-volume set was ready for publication but was confiscated by the Soviet authorities. She also took an interest in non-Ukrainian folklore and wrote Prymityvni opovidannia: Kazky i baiky Afryky ta Ameryky (Primitive Stories: The Tales and Fables of Africa and America, 1923). After her father's death she prepared for publication his manuscripts, particularly the subsequent volumes of Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy (The History of Ukraine-Rus’) and Istoriia ukraïns’koï literatury (The History of Ukrainian Literature). In July 1938 Hrushevska was arrested and in 1939 sent to a concentration camp in Nogaisk. Her manuscripts were destroyed. Although some of her works were approved in the Soviet Union, she was not rehabilitated by the Soviet authorities. I. Matiash prepared a biography and bibliography about her in 1997 as well as a biographical sketch in 2002.
Mykola Mushynka
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]