Shulhyn, Yakiv

Shulhyn, Yakiv [Шульгин, Яків; Šul’hyn, Jakiv], b 19 February 1851 in Kyiv, d 28 November 1911 in Kyiv. Community activist, pedagogue, and historian; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society; father of Oleksander Shulhyn. He graduated from Kyiv University (1874), where he studied under Volodymyr Antonovych and Mykhailo Drahomanov. Shulhyn was an important figure in the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He belonged to the Hromada of Kyiv, and in 1876 he donated his inheritance of 12,000 rubles to fund Drahomanov’s emigration and the publication of the journal Hromada (Geneva). He continued his studies abroad (1876–7) and then taught in gymnasiums in Kyiv and Odesa. Shulhyn was arrested in 1879 because of his national and cultural activities and for importing a printing press for the Old Hromada. He was exiled to Siberia for four years, and upon his return he worked in a bank in Yelysavethrad. In 1899 he returned to Kyiv, where he resumed teaching, contributed to the work of the Southwestern Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, wrote articles for Kievskaia starina, and assisted the Vik publishing house. He was a member of the Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler and a founding member and secretary of the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv.

Later in life Shulhyn wrote articles on the history of 17th- and 18th-century Left-Bank Ukraine (1899; published under the cryptonym ‘L.Ch.’), the Koliivshchyna rebellion (1890), Right-Bank Ukraine in the mid-18th century (1891), and Pavlo Polubotok (1890). Memoirs of him were published by Mykhailo Hrushevsky (ZNTSh, vol 107 [1912]) and Volodymyr Shcherbyna (ZNTK, vol 10 [1912]).

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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