Malytska, Konstantyna

Malytska, Konstantyna [Малицька, Константина; Malyc'ka; pseudonyms: Rastyk, Vira Lebedova, and Chaika Dnistrova], b 30 May 1872 in Kropyvnyk, Kalush county, Galicia, d 17 March 1947 in Lviv. Educator, writer, and women's movement leader. After graduating from the State Teachers' Seminary in Lviv (1892), she taught elementary school in Halych and Luzhany and at the Shevchenko Girls' School in Lviv. She edited the children's magazine Dzvinok (1906–12), in which her stories and plays appeared. She was also active in the Women's Hromada in Lviv. In 1913 she was one of the founders of the Fund for Ukraine's Needs, which provided aid to the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen in 1914. During the Russian occupation she was arrested and deported to Siberia (1915–20). On her return she presided over the Women’s Congress of 1921 and then served as president (1923–4) and executive member (1924–8) of the Union of Ukrainian Women. In 1930 she joined the editorial board of Nova khata, to which she contributed articles. In 1938 she helped cofound the Druzhyna Kniahyni Olhy women’s organization. In 1941 she initiated the relief organization Women's Service to Ukraine (1941). After the Second World War she worked at the Lviv Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

Some of Malytska’s magazine contributions have come out in separate collections—her stories for children in Mali druzi (Little Friends, 1899; 2nd edn 1906) and her pedagogical articles in Maty (Mother, 1902) and Z trahedii dytiachykh dush (From the Tragedies of Children’s Souls, 1907). She also wrote children’s plays and Sich society songs and translated children's literature.

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