Stepovych, Andronyk

Stepovych, Andronyk [Степович, Андроник; Stepovyč; né Dudka-Stepovych], b July 1857 in Lebedyntsi, Pryluka county, Poltava gubernia, d 26 November 1935 in Kyiv. Slavist. He graduated from Galagan College (1875) and Kyiv University (1879). He worked as a school inspector in Volhynia gubernia, taught Russian literature in several Kyiv gymnasiums (1879–88), and taught Slavic philology at Kyiv University (1895–1917). He was also director of Galagan College (1893–1906), and in 1907 he founded a private men'’s gymnasium in Kyiv. In the Soviet period he was a professor of Slavic studies at the Kyiv Institute of People's Education (1920–4), and he taught Slavic philology to graduate students at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) until 1930. As a scholar he was influenced by his teacher Oleksander Kotliarevsky and by Pavlo Zhytetsky. From 1877 on he published many articles and Russian encyclopedia entries on Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian literature and translated into Russian West and South Slavic literary works (eg, by A. Jirásek, J. Vrchlický, and I. Vazov), thereby playing an important role in popularizing those literatures in the Russian Empire. His major contributions were a history of Czech literature (1886) and books of essays on the history of Slavic literatures (1893) and the history of Serbo-Croatian literature (1899). He also edited the annual of Galagan College (from 1894) and a few Slavist compendiums, published materials from the Galagan College archives, and wrote many studies and reviews in the fields of Ukrainian folk music, education, philology, and social and regional history in Kievskaia starina and the VUAN serials Etnohrafichnyi visnyk, Za sto lit, Zapysky Istorychno-filolohichnoho viddilu VUAN, and Pervisne hromadianstvo ta ioho perezhytky na Ukraïni.

Roman Senkus

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]