Shukhevych, Volodymyr

Shukhevych, Volodymyr [Шухевич, Володимир; Šuxevyč], b 15 March 1849 in Tyshkivtsi, Kolomyia circle, Galicia, d 10 April 1915 in Lviv. Ethnographer, civic leader, educator, and publicist; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1908; the husband of Hermina Shukhevych and father of Dariia Starosolska. After graduating from Lviv University he taught secondary school in Lviv. He founded several educational societies, such as Ruska Besida (later Ukrainska Besida), which he headed in 1895–1910, the Boian society (1891), and the Lysenko Music Society in Lviv, which he headed in 1903–15. He served on the executive of the Prosvita society. He founded and edited the journals Dzvinok (1890–5) and Uchytel’ (1893–1905) and edited the newspaper Zerkalo. Many of his articles appeared in Zoria (Lviv) and Dilo. He wrote a chemistry textbook (1884) and compiled several anthologies for school use. On his expeditions to the Hutsul region and other regions he collected ethnographic materials and also valuable museum pieces, which he donated to the National Museum in Lviv. In 1902–8 he was custodian of the Dzieduszycki Museum, at which he set up a natural science and ethnographic section. In 1894 he organized an ethnographic section at the Provincial Exhibition in Lviv. Shukhevych’s major work, which is unsurpassed to this day, is his five-volume ethnographic and folkloric study Huculszczyzna (The Hutsul Region, 1899–1908; in Polish, 4 vols, 1902–8), which propagated knowledge about the Hutsul folk life.

Mykola Mushynka

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