Borys Hrinchenko

Borys Dmytrovych Hrinchenko
Борис Дмитрович Грінченко
Born December 9, 1863
Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire
Died May 6, 1910 (aged 46)
Province of Imperia, Italy
Resting place Baikove Cemetery, Kiev
Pen name Vasyl Chaichenko
Occupation prose writer, poet, pedagogue, ethnographer, historian, publicist, activist, politician
Language Ukrainian
Nationality Ukrainian
Alma mater Kharkiv University
Period 1880s - 1910
Genre novels, poems, articles, ballads
Subject nationalism, anti-chauvinism, cultural revival
Notable works To my countrymen (1898)
Spouse Maria Hladylina
Children Anastasia (Nastya)

Borys Dmytrovych Hrinchenko (Grinchenko) (1863–1910) was a classical Ukrainian prose writer, political activist, historian, publicist, and ethnographer. He was instrumental in the Ukrainian cultural revival of the late 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Hrinchenko was an editor of various Ukrainian periodicals. He was one of the founders of the Ukrainian Radical Party. Grinchenko also was an author of fundamental ethnographic, lexicographic, and pedagogical works, literary studies, historical reviews, the first textbooks in the Ukrainian language, particularly Native word, the school-book for reading. He was an editor of the four volume Dictionary of the Ukrainian language (Publication: "Kievskaya starina", 1907–1909). One of the organizers and directors of Prosvita Society.

Borys Hrinchenko was born on December 9, 1863 in the khutir of Vilkhovy Yar, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire (today - Sumy Oblast, Ukraine). His father was a retired army officer of an impoverished noble heritage. His family possessed 19 desyatinas of land mostly forest and a water mill. Father knew the Ukrainian language well and used it only when talked with neighboring peasants, while at home everyone in the family spoke Russian. Before enrolling into the Kharkiv city realnoe uchilishche, young Hrinchenko was home schooled. While in school he was first arrested on December 29, 1879 "for possession and distribution" of a banned book written by Serhiy Podolynsky "Steam machine" (Парова машина, 1875). At 16 he was prohibited a further higher education. After about a year of exile to his father estate he returned to Kharkiv and working as a tutor earned money to obtain the diploma from Kharkiv University as a people's educator.

He died on May 6, 1910 in the town Ospedaletti in Liguria, Italy.

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