Rusov, Mykhailo

Rusov, Mykhailo [Русов, Михайло] (pseuds: Totsky, M. Liashenko, Mishelia), b 9 November or December 1876 in Oleshnia, Horodnia county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 24 February 1909 in Saint Petersburg. Political revolutionary and ethnographer; son of Oleksander Rusov and Sofiia Rusova. Like his parents he was an adherent of Mykhailo Drahomanov's political and socialist ideas. He entered Kharkiv University in 1895, but he was expelled in 1899 for one year for his involvement in the Kharkiv Student Hromada. He initiated the creation of the Revolutionary Ukrainian party (RUP) and its Poltava branch (1900). In 1901 he was arrested for leading a political demonstration in Poltava and spreading revolutionary propaganda, again expelled from Kharkiv University, and banned from Kharkiv and other cities with universities for two years. After emigrating in 1902, he studied at Leipzig University (1902–6), did field research for his PH D thesis on Subcarpathian buildings, and was a member of the RUP Foreign Group in Lviv. He subsidized RUP publications and activities and contributed to the party's organs Haslo and Dobra novyna. He also published several articles in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk in 1900–1 and a brochure on peasant handicrafts (1906).

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