Владимир Антонович: Украинский историк және ұлттық қайта өркендеу қозғалысының қайраткері

Russian Ukrainian historian

Volodymyr Antonovych (, tr. Volodymyr Bonifatijovych Antonovych; Włodzimierz Antonowicz; Влади́мир Бонифа́тьевич Антоно́вич, tr. Vladímir Bonifát'evich Antonóvich; January 18 1834 [O. S. January 6 1834] – March 21 1908 [O. S. March 8 1908]) was a prominent Ukrainian historian, archivist and archaeologist, who was known as one of the most prominent figures of the Ukrainian national revival movement in the Russian Empire. Antonovych was a longtime Professor of Russian history at Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev and a correspondent member of the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences. His main work was an edition of the eight section Archives of South Western Russia.

Antonovych was born as Włodzimierz Antonowicz on January 18 1834 [O. S. January 6 1834], in the village of Makhnivka, in the Berdichevsky Uyezd of Kiev Governorate, (now Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine) to a landless family of impoverished teachers descended from Polish gentry; Antonovych claimed ancestry to the princely Lubomirski family through his mother. According to his contemporary Franciszek Rawita Gawroński, Antonovych on various occasions claimed his father was either a Pole named Bolesław Antonowicz or a Hungarian wanderer named János Diday. Viktor Korotkyi, a historian specializing in the history of Kyiv University, believed the latter to be Antonovych's biological father. His mother, Monika Gurska, was a governess. the Związek Trojnicki ("Triple Society"), named after the three Polish territories acquired by Russia in the 18th century: Volhynia, Podilia and the Kyiv area. The society's goal was promoting the abolition of serfdom and persuading the peasants to support Polish independence, while preparing the members for their role in the planned all national uprising. Due to his involvement, Antonowicz became one of the prominent examples of the "peasant lovers" (or "Reds"), a loose group of young artists and liberal thinkers fascinated with the peasantry as the "core of the nation". However, when the January Uprising finally started, the Society divided. Antonowicz, highly critical of the bourgeoisie and the szlachta, sided with the lower classes and left the society, instead forming a Ukrainian society called the Kyiv Community (Київська громада). The conflict between Antonowicz and his university colleagues was further aggravated by the conflict over the Polish language. While most democratic societies decided to appeal to the tsar and ask for the Polish language to be promoted to the status of language of instruction, Antonowicz ultimately opposed those plans. This conflict further strengthened Antonowicz's pro Ukrainian stance on one side, and the animosity between him and his colleagues on the other, to the extent that he was considered a "renegade" by some. In 1861 he changed his name to its Ukrainized form and converted to the Orthodox faith, common among the peasants living around Kyiv, as opposed to the Catholicism of the higher class of local society He also married Varvara Ivanovna Mikhels, and started to teach Latin in the 1st Kyiv Gymnasium. Dmytro Bahaliy, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Mytrofan Dovnar Zapolsky and Ivan Lynnychenko.

His wife was Kateryna Antonovych Melnyk (2 December 1859 – 12 January 1942) who was a Ukrainian historian and archaeologist from the city of Khorol (today – Poltava Oblast). In the 1880s she participated in the archaeological excavations near Shumsk (today – Ternopil Oblast) and in 1885, she visited Ternopil during her travel around the region. Since 1919, Kateryna worked in the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Volodymyr Antonovych is the father to former Ukrainian minister (and cultural historian in Prague) Dmytro Antonovych and the grandfather of historians Mykhailo Antonovych and Marko Antonovych and of Maryna Rudnytska, professor in the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Maryna Rudnytska was the wife of Jaroslav Rudnyckyj, a Ukrainian Canadian linguist.