Lukashevych, Platon

Lukashevych, Platon [Лукашевич, Платон; Lukaševyč], b 1806 in Berezan, Pereiaslav county, Kyiv gubernia, d 1887 in Berezan. Folklorist. A graduate of Nizhyn Lyceum, where he was Nikolai Gogol’s classmate, and of the Richelieu Lyceum (1828), he began to collect Ukrainian folklore under Jan Kollár’s influence. Of the collected materials, he published only four carols and the collection Malorossiskie i chervonorusskie narodnye dumy i pesni (Little Russian and Red Rus’ Folk Dumas and Songs, 1836), which contained 176 folk songs of various genres and spells against toothache. Some of the dumas in the collection—on Samiilo Kyshka, the Cossack Holota, and the storm on the Black Sea, and the captives’ lament—appeared in print for the first time; others—on Ivan (Ivas) Konovchenko, Danylo Nechai, Perebyinis (Maksym Kryvonis), and Morozenko (Stanyslav Morozenko)—appeared in a new version. After his death some of Lukashevych’s notes were published by Vasyl Horlenko and Borys Hrinchenko. His manuscripts are preserved at the National Library of Ukraine; they include a study of Ukrainian superstitions, a collection of Ukrainian songs written down by him, a collection of folk songs with his commentary, an essay on Ukrainian fables, and his autographs of all the dumas and many of the songs in the 1836 collection.

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