Yurkevych, Osyp

Yurkevych, Osyp [Юркевич, Осип; Jurkevyč], b 12 February 1855 in Kryve, Skvyra county, Kyiv gubernia, d 24 November 1910 in Kyiv. Community leader and co-operative movement organizer; father of Lev Yurkevych. After graduating in medicine from Kyiv University (1881) he practiced in Kharkiv, in the Chernihiv region, and in Kornyn, Kyiv gubernia. He was a member of the Hromada of Kyiv. Beginning in 1901 he organized consumer co-operatives in Kornyn, Kryve, and other towns. With the appearance of a Ukrainian press after the Revolution of 1905, he contributed articles on co-operatives and rural life to various journals and newspapers. Some of them came out in the collection Suchasni sil's'ki maliunky: Pershyi rik spivrobitnytstva u vil'nii presi (Contemporary Village Paintings: The First Year of Contributions to the Free Press, 1907). He served on the board of directors of the Kyiv Credit Union and on the auditing commission of the Kyiv Consumers’ Union.

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