Hryhorovych-Barsky, Vasyl

Hryhorovych-Barsky, Vasyl [Hryhorovyč-Bars’kyj, Vasyl’] (pseuds Plaka, Albov), b 1701 in Kyiv, d 7 October 1747 in Kyiv. Traveler and writer. He studied at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy in 1715–23, and from 1723 to 1747 traveled in countries of central, eastern, and southern Europe and the Near East. He compiled a Latin grammar for Greeks and left a detailed account of the economic condition, education, customs, history, and research on artistic monuments of the countries and places he visited; the work was accompanied by 150 drawings. At first his description was circulated widely in copied manuscript form in Ukraine and Russia. The first edition was published posthumously by Vasyl H. Ruban in 1778. The eighth, most complete, edition, with letters to his brother Ivan Hryhorovych-Barsky, appeared in four parts in 1885–7 under the editorship of N. Barsukov as Stranstvovaniia Vasil’ia Grigorovicha-Barskogo po sviatym mestam Vostoka s 1723 po 1747 g. (The Travels of Vasyl Hryhorovych-Barsky to the Holy Places of the East from 1723 to 1747). Hryhorovych-Barsky was buried at the Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery. Books about him have been published by V. Askochensky (1854) and I. Rodachenko (1967).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989). The bibliography has been updated.]