Liubavsky, Matvii

Liubavsky, Matvii [Любавський, Матвій; Ljubavs'kyj, Matvij; or Любаускі, Мацвей; Liubauski, Matsvei], b 13 August 1860 in Bolshie Mozhary, Riazan gubernia, Russia, d 22 November 1936 in Ufa, RSFSR. Historian of Belarusian origin; full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1929. He was a student of Vasilii Kliuchevsky and later became a professor at Moscow University (1901–17, rector from 1911). A specialist in the history of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian state, he wrote Oblastnoe delenie i mestnoe upravlenie Litovsko-Rus'kogo gosudarstva ko vremeni izdaniia pervogo Litovskogo statuta (Regional Division and Local Government in the Lithuanian-Ruthenian State to the Time of the Publication of the First Lithuanian Statute, 1898), Litovsko-russkii seim (The Lithuanian-Ruthenian Diet, 1901), and Ocherk istorii Litovsko-Russkogo gosudarstva (Survey of the History of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian State, 1910), as well as Istoriia zapadnykh slavian (History of the Western Slavs, 1917; 2nd edn 1918) and a study in Belarusian of the Lithuanian-Belarusian state at the beginning of the 16th century (1926). Mykhailo Hrushevsky published O knige M.K. Liubavskogo ‘Lektsii po drevnei russkoi istorii do kontsa XVI v.’ (On the Book by M. Liubavsky ‘Lectures in Ancient Ruthenian History to the End of the 16th Century,’ 1915), and I. Borozdin’s bibliography of Liubavsky’s works was published in the commemorative Sbornik stattei v chest' M.K. Liubavskogo (Collection of Articles in Honor of M. Liubavsky, 1917). After the October Revolution of 1917 Liubavsky was exiled to Ufa.

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