Navrotsky, Volodymyr

Navrotsky, Volodymyr [Навроцький, Володимир; Navroc’kyj] (pseud: Onysym), b 18 November 1847 in Kotuziv, Berezhany circle, Galicia, d 16 March 1882 in Rzeszów, Poland. Economist, statistician, and publicist. As a gymnasium student in Stanyslaviv he led a Ukrainophile student hromada with Ostap Terletsky. While studying law at Lviv University (1866–71) he was active among Lviv populists and in the Prosvita society (secretary of its chief executive, 1870–2) and contributed to the journal Pravda in Lviv. The Polish authorities banished him to Rzeszów in 1871. From there he contributed to the journal Pravda and Dilo in Lviv and to liberal Russian-language periodicals, such as Kievskii telegraf, Odesskii vestnik, and Vestnik Evropy. His largest work, on drunkenness and propination in Galicia, appeared in Mykhailo Drahomanov's Hromada (Geneva) in 1882. Navrotsky and his articles significantly influenced the decision of many young Ukrainians to devote themselves to ‘organic work on behalf of the people.’ Of a projected multivolume edition of his collected works, only the first volume, containing his satire, ethnographic studies, and poetry, was published (1884, ed Ivan Franko). Navrotsky's diary was published by Franko in Zhytie i slovo (1894, no. 6), and Illia Vytanovych's book about him appeared in Lviv in 1934.

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