Borys Dmytrovych Grinchenko: a Ukrainian writer, scientist, ethnographer, philologist, pedagogue and public figure (1863–1910)

Borys Grinchenko 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 Grinchenko was home schooled. He lived in this house in years

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" (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 taught in this private school as a village teacher in 1887 – 1894 years. Grinchenko-pedagogue taught in the villages of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Katerynoslav regions. He combined working with pholklore-ethnographical, culturological, scientifical and linguistical studies.

All his life B.D. Grinchenko nurtured the idea of creating the national school and longed for its practical realization. He made a valuable contribution to the case of systematization of Ukrainian school education, defined the scientific approaches for organization school education. The numerous works of B.D. Grinchenko outline the circle of his interests. The climax of his works is a four-volumes edition of «The dictionary of Ukrainian language» ( ). The life and activity of B.D. Grinchenko is an outstanding example of dedication to Ukrainian culture and national idea. Working has been the sense and calling of his life. The tireless worker that devoted all his time and efforts to Ukrainian culture, can rightly stand beside such titans of the Ukrainian nation as Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Panteleymon Kulish, Lesya Ukrainka.

Brotherhood of Tarasovs was an underground student organization. It was established in 1891 during a visit of Taras Shevchenko burial grounds near Kaniv. The founders included Vitaliy Borovyk, Borys Grinchenko, Mykola Mikhnovsky, Ivan Lypa, and others. Beside cultural propaganda Tarasovs were expressing political statements for the liberation of the Ukrainian nation from under the Russian occupation, full autonomy for all people of the Russian Empire, and social justice. In the small town of Hlynsk near Romny where the students operated by the end of summer 1891 was established the program of the Brotherhood. Some of them were as such: Independent sovereign Ukraine: united and undivided from San to Kuban, from the Carpathian mountains to the Caucasus mountains free among the free, equal among the equal, and without a class stand-off in a future. Federation of Left-bank, Right-bank, Steppe Ukraine, Kuban, and Galicia. A head of state is hetman as the president and seym as parliament. Freedom of religion, division between church and state, national army. We won't be us, if for Ukraine there is no freedom nor fate.

The ideological fundamentals of the organization were prepared by Ivan Lypa and were published in Pravda magazine in April Those ideas were later propagated by B.Grinchenko in his Letters from the Dnieper Ukraine. Brotherhood of Tarasovs discontinued in 1898, but under its influence another organization, Stara Hromada reestablished itself as the General Ukrainian Organization in 1897 under the initiative of Oleksandr Konysky and Volodymyr Antonovych, while the younger generation of the Hromada created the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party in 1900.

Brotherhood of Tarasovs members

Borys Dmytrovych Grinchenko 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. Grinchenko was an editor of various Ukrainian periodicals. He was one of the founders of the Ukrainian Radical Party. Grinchenko 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. Grinchenko was one of the organizers and directors of Kyiv Prosvita Society.

B.D. Grinchenko was an editor of the four volume Dictionary of the Ukrainian language (Publication: "Kievskaya starina", 1907–1909).

B.D. Grinchenko died on May 6, 1910 in the town Ospedaletti in Liguria, Italy. B.D. Grinchenko was buried in Kyiv on Baykove cemetery. Employees and students of the University look after his grave.

Our University is named after B.D. Grinchenko. 2008, a year of 145th anniversary since the birth of B.D. Grinchenko, has been defined as the year of B.D. Grinchenko in the University. 2013, a year of 150th anniversary since the birth of B.D. Grinchenko, has been defined by the Verhovna Rada of Ukraine to celebrate on the state level. Each first week in December we celebrate Grinchenko Day as University Day. This year it is on December,6.

Borys Grinchenko Museum in Kyiv in our University building where he lectured.

Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University Institute of Society of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University We study in it. Was done by Tetiana Salata and Julia Levkivska