Rusanivsky, Vitalii

Rusanivsky, Vitalii [Русанівський, Віталій; Rusanivs'kyj, Vitalij], b 25 June 1931 in Kharkiv, d 29 January 2007 in Kyiv. Linguist; corresponding (1976–82) and then full member (from 1982) of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. After completing his graduate studies at Kyiv University (1957) he lectured there and joined the staff of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He served as the institute’s deputy director (1964–81) and then director, and served as academic secretary of the Division of Literature, Languages, and Fine Arts of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1978. He wrote books on aspect and tense in 16th- and 17th-century Ukrainian (1959), the structure of the Ukrainian verb (1971), Slavic interlinguistic relations and the formation of functional styles in 16th- and 17th-century literary Ukrainian (1973), the folk vernacular as the source of development of East Slavic literary languages from the 16th to the early 18th century (1978), the origin and development of the East Slavic languages (1980), and the sources of Slavic literary languages (1985). He was also the coauthor of books on the philosophical questions of linguistics (1972), the morphology of contemporary literary Ukrainian (1969), the history of the Ukrainian language (2 vols, 1978–9), and of a Ukrainian orthographic dictionary (1974) and other works, and the editor of a collection of 15th-century Ukrainian charters (1965), several collections of articles, and secondary-school language textbooks.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]