Women's Hromada in Kyiv

Women's Hromada in Kyiv [Жіноча громада; Zhinocha hromada]. A clandestine women’s group founded in the autumn of 1901 by prominent members of Kyiv’s nationally conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia: M. Chykalenko (Yevhen Chykalenko’s wife), L. Drahomanova (Mykhailo Drahomanov’s wife), Mariia Hrinchenko, Odarka Romanova, L. Shulhyn (Yakiv Shulhyn’s wife), Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska, M. Stepanenko (Ivan M. Steshenko’s sister), M. Tymchenko (Yevhen Tymchenko’s wife), and V. Zhytetska. Younger women, such as Hanna Chykalenko-Keller and V. Chykalenko (M. Chykalenko’s daughters), M. Hozhenko (later Borys Matiushenko’s wife), N. Hrinchenko (Borys Hrinchenko’s and M. Hrinchenko’s daughter), I. Kosach (Lesia Ukrainka’s sister), Mariia Livytska and Ye. Livytska (Andrii Livytsky’s wife and sister), K. Lysenko, H. Lysenko, and Mariana Lysenko (Mykola Lysenko’s daughters), Ye. Shcherbakivska (Danylo Shcherbakivsky’s and Vadym Shcherbakivsky’s sister and later Metodii Pavlovsky’s and Vasyl H. Krychevsky’s wife), Nadiia Shulhyna-Ishchuk (L. Shulhyn’s and Ya. Shulhyn’s daughter), Oksana Steshenko, and K. Yarmut (later Yevhen Holitsynsky’s wife) also joined the Hromada. The members secretly collected dues, distributed Ukrainian educational pamphlets and books in the Ukrainian countryside, and materially supported and helped several talented young peasant women while they trained in Kyiv to become village teachers. The Hromada ceased functioning during the Revolution of 1905, which made its conspiratorial activities redundant.

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