Mytrak, Oleksander

Mytrak, Oleksander or Mitrak, Aleksander (Митрак, Олександер; pseudonym: Materyn), b 16 October 1837 in Ploske, Transcarpathia, d 17 March 1913 in Rosvyhove, near Mukachevo, Transcarpathia. Orthodox priest, writer, ethnographer, folklorist, and lexicologist of Russophile orientation. His ethnographic studies appeared in some Transcarpathian papers, such as Slovo, Listok, and Karpat'. He collected folk songs, some of which were published in Yakiv Holovatsky’s Narodnye pesni Galitskoi i Ugorskoi Rusi (Folk Songs of Galician and Hungarian Ruthenia, 1878). His elegies and patriotic verses appeared under his pseudonym. He compiled and published at his own expense a Russian-Hungarian dictionary of almost 70,000 words, including over a thousand middle-Transcarpathian dialectisms (see Transcarpathian dialects) (1881). His Hungarian-Russian dictionary was published only in 1922.

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