Kovalevsky, Mykola V.

Kovalevsky, Mykola V. [Ковалевський, Микола; Kovalevs’kyj], b 1841 near Hadiach, Poltava gubernia, d 1897 in Kyiv. Teacher and community leader. A graduate of Kyiv University and the Higher Pedagogical Courses in Saint Petersburg, he taught in the Cadet School in Kyiv (see Cadet corps) before he was fired for political reasons and moved to Odesa, where he worked as a private tutor. A close friend of Mykhailo Drahomanov, he taught in the Sunday-school movement (1859–60) and was a member of the Hromada of Kyiv and the Odesa hromada. Kovalevsky was arrested in June 1879 and exiled to Siberia until 1882. There he became acquainted with the American G. Kennan and provided him with much information for his book The Siberian Exile System (2 vols, 1891). From 1882 Kovalevsky helped raise money to support Drahomanov's political and publicistic work in Geneva. He also wrote a popular history of Ukraine, published in Lviv under the pseudonym I. Markevych, and raised money for the Galician radicals. His memoirs were published in the journal Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1901). He is buried in the Baikove cemetery in Kyiv.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]