Leontovych, Volodymyr M.

Leontovych, Volodymyr M. [Леонтович, Володимир; Leontovyč] (pseud: V. Levenko), b 5 August 1866 in Orikhovshchyna khutir, Lubny county, Poltava gubernia, d 10 December 1933 in Prague. Civic leader and writer. After graduating in law from Moscow University (1888) he managed his father's estates and was active in local zemstvo affairs and in the Ukrainian cultural movement. He was a member of the Hromada of Kyiv and the Society of Ukrainian Progressives as well as a contributor to Zoria (Lviv), Kievskaia starina, Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk, and Hromads’ka dumka. The daily Rada (Kyiv) andmonthly Nova hromada were financed by him. In 1917 Leontovych sat on the Central Rada, and in 1918 he served as minister of agriculture in Fedir Lyzohub's cabinet of the Hetman government. When the Bolsheviks occupied Ukraine, he emigrated to Berlin and then to Prague. Leontovych wrote novelettes on contemporary life, such as Khronika rodyny Hrechok (A Chronicle of the Hrechka Family, 1922), short stories, and memoirs, such as Spomyny utikacha (Memoirs of a Refugee, 1922). He collaborated with O. Yefymov on a Russian-Ukrainian legal dictionary (2 edns, 1917, 1919).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]