Zhyvotko, Arkadii

Zhyvotko, Arkadii [Животко, Аркадій; Žyvotko, Arkadij] (pseudonyms: A. Pukhovsky, A. Pukhalsky), b 3 March 1890 in Pukhove, Voronezh gubernia, d 12 June 1948 in Aschaffenburg, Germany. Historian of the Ukrainian press, educator, journalist, and civic activist; full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences. He graduated in 1917 from the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg, where as a student he had been active in the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1917–18 he represented the Voronezh region on the Central Rada. When the Bolsheviks occupied Ukraine, he fled to Kremianets, where he worked as a teacher and was active in the local Prosvita society. After emigrating to Czechoslovakia in 1923, he lectured at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute in Prague and directed the archives of the Ukrainian Civic Committee in Czechoslovakia (which became the Ukrainian Historical Cabinet). After the Second World War he was director of the Aschaffenburg branch of the Museum-Archive of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to poems and articles on public issues, literature, and education he wrote studies of the history of the Ukrainian press, most notably Istoriia ukraïns'koï presy (The History of the Ukrainian Press, 1946; reprint 1990).

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