Matushevsky, Fedir

Matushevsky, Fedir [Матушевський, Федір; Matuševs’kyj], b 21 June 1869 in Smila, Cherkasy county, Kyiv gubernia, d 21 October 1919 in Athens. Civic and political leader and publicist. After graduating from the law faculty of Dorpat (Tartu) University (1904), where he founded a Ukrainian student hromada, he settled in Kyiv and devoted himself to writing and publishing. He was one of the founders of the Vik publishing house and a contributor to Rada (Kyiv), Kievskaia starina, Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk, and Ukrainskaia zhizn’ as well as editor of the first Ukrainian daily in Russian-ruled Ukraine, Hromads’ka dumka (1905–6). He organized co-operatives in the villages of Kharkiv gubernia and Kyiv gubernia and edited the co-operative weekly Muraveinyk-Komashnia. A leading member of the Ukrainian Democratic Radical party and the Society of Ukrainian Progressives and, later, of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists, he devoted much of his energy to political work. During Ukraine’s struggle fonr independence (1917–20) he was a member of the Central Rada. In January 1919 he was appointed head of the diplomatic mission of the Ukrainian National Republic to Greece. Particularly notable among his numerous articles were his report on Taras Shevchenko’s grave, his study of Anatolii Svydnytsky, his biography of Volodymyr Antonovych, and his essays on Shevchenko. Excerpts from his diary were published posthumously in the first volume of Z mynuloho (From the Past, 1938).

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