Plevako, Mykola
Plevako, Mykola [Плевако, Микола], b 9 December 1890 in Dvorichna, Kupiansk county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 25 April 1941 in Vishneva raion, Kazakhstan. Literary scholar and bibliographer; brother of Oleksander Plevako and Petro Plevako. He studied under Mykola Sumtsov at Kharkiv University, from which he graduated in 1916. He was a professor of Ukrainian literary history at the Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University (1919–21), a professor at the Kharkiv Institute of People's Education (from 1921), and director of the bibliography cabinet of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Research Institute in Kharkiv (1926–33). In 1938 he was exiled to Kazakhstan, where he died in unknown circumstances.
Plevako published studies of Leonid Hlibov, Markiian Shashkevych, Borys Hrinchenko (Zhyttia ta pratsia B. Hrinchenka [The Life and !--NL-->Work of B. Hrinchenko, 1911]), Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko (O stile i iazyke povesti G.F. Kvitky ‘Marusia’ [The Style and Language of H. Kvitka’s Novelette Marusia, 1916]), Taras Shevchenko (Shevchenkiv shchodennyk [Shevchenko’s Diary, 1924]), Shevchenko i krytyka [Shevchenko and Criticism, 1924], and Shevchenko v tsyfrakh [Shevchenko in Numbers, 1926]), and other works. He edited a number of readers, including Khrestomatiia po ukraïns'kii literaturi (An Anthology of Ukrainian Literature, coedited by Mykola Sumtsov, 1918) and Khrestomatiia novoï ukraïns'koï literatury (An Anthology of Modern Ukrainian Literature, 2 vols, 1923, 1926; includes biographies and comprehensive bibliographies of 75 writers, from Ivan Kotliarevsky to Mykola Khvylovy). He also edited Tvory L. Hlibova (The Works of L. Hlibov, 1927, with Ivan Kapustiansky) and Shevchenko’s Kobzar (1930, with Yarema Aizenshtok). His Bio-bibliohrafichnyi slovnyk ukraïns'kykh pys'mennykiv (Biobibliographical Dictionary of Ukrainian Writers), which he worked on for 10 years (1924–34), has been lost. A compilation of his works was published posthumously, Mykola Plevako: Statti, rozvidky, i bio-bibliohrafichni materiialy (Mykola Plevako: Articles, Studies, and Biobibliographic Materials, 1961).
Ivan Koshelivets
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]