Matsiievych, Kost

Matsiievych, Kost or Kostiantyn [Мацієвич, Кость or Костянтин; Macijevyč, Kost' or Kostiantyn], b 18 May 1874 in Deremezna, Kyiv gubernia, d 2 April 1942 in Prague. Agronomist, educator, and civic and political leader. A graduate of the agricultural institute in Novo-Aleksandriia (now Puławy), he served as scientific secretary of the Poltava Agricultural Society (1899–1901), gubernial agronomist of the Saratov zemstvo (1901–5), research associate of the Kharkiv Agricultural Society (1907–15), editor of the popular magazine Khliborob (Lubny) and the scientific periodical Agronomicheskii zhurnal, and a professor of agricultural economics at the Higher Agricultural Courses for Women and the Kamianoostriv Agricultural Courses in Petrograd (1915–17). After returning to Kyiv he was active in the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists. As deputy general secretary of agrarian affairs under the Central Rada, he drafted a land reform bill for Ukraine. He also taught agricultural economy in higher educational institutions, edited Vistnyk hromads'koï ahronomiï, organized farm co-operatives, and headed the board of directors of the Tsentral co-operative association. In 1918–19 he was assigned by the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic to negotiate with the Entente and was appointed minister of foreign affairs in Serhii Ostapenko’s cabinet. Then he headed the Ukrainian National Republic’s diplomatic mission to Romania (1919–23). After emigrating to Czechoslovakia he served as a professor at the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Poděbrady and then at the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute. He continued his political activity as a member of the Ukrainian Radical Democratic party and president of the Ukrainian Democratic Club in Prague.

Most of Matsiievych’s works are devoted to social agronomy, of which he was a leading specialist. His most important publications are Glavnye voprosy povysheniia urozhaia sel'sko-khoziaistvennykh kul'tur (The Main Problems of Increasing the Yield of Agricultural Crops, 1904), Krestianskie obshchestva sel'skogo khoziaistva (Peasant Farming Societies, 1904), and Holovni pryntsypy zemel'noï reformy na Ukraïni (The Main Principles of Land Reform in Ukraine, 1917).

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