Zhatkovych, Yurii

Zhatkovych, Yurii [Жаткович, Юрій; Žatkovyč, Jurij; Zsátkovics, Kálmán], b 14 October 1855 in Dravtsi near Uzhhorod, Transcarpathia, d 25 September 1920 in Stroine, Bereg komitat, Transcarpathia. Ukrainian historian, writer, and translator; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Most of his scholarly articles deal with the history of Transcarpathia, particularly its church figures, eparchy, and monasteries. He was elected to the Hungarian Historical Society for his lengthy study of the struggle between the Eger diocese and Mukachevo eparchy (1884). Under Volodymyr Hnatiuk’s influence he became interested in Transcarpathian ethnography and published some articles on the subject in Ukrainian periodicals. He wrote short stories about the life of the common people and translated some works by Marko Vovchok, Ivan Franko, Osyp Makovei, Oleksa Storozhenko, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky into Hungarian. He translated Edmund Egán’s brochure on the economic situation of the Ruthenian peasants (see Ruthenians) in Hungary (1901) into Ukrainian. On the language issue he took a conservative position, although he used a variant of yazychiie that was close to the popular vernacular. His textbooks for Transcarpathian Ukrainian schools were banned, but three of them (in geography, history, and social studies) were reprinted 14 times in Slovak. Many of his works remain unpublished.

Mykola Mushynka

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