Zhytetsky, Irodion

Zhytetsky, Irodion [Житецький, Іродіон; Žytec'kyj], b 20 April 1851 in Zaliniine, Kostiantynohrad county, Poltava gubernia, d 1913. Ethnographer and civic activist. After graduating from Kyiv University (1875) he lectured at a teachers' institute in Hlukhiv and was active in the Hromada of Kyiv. In 1878 he was expelled from Kyiv University for his involvement in student protests, which he described in his Martovskoe dvizhenie studentov Kievskogo universiteta 1878 g. (The March Movement of Kyiv University Students in 1878, 1878), written under the pseudonym M. Tkachenko. Having been exiled to Viatka (1879–82) and then Astrakhan (1882–5) gubernias, he studied the local people and wrote two books on the Kalmyks of Astrakhan (1892, 1893). He contributed a study of national minorities in Ukraine to Kievskaia starina (1883, nos 5–6, 8–9, 11).

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