Volodymyr Antonovych

Antonovych was born as Włodzimierz Antonowicz on , 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. She married Bonifacy Antonowicz, whose surname Włodzimierz would adopt. The couple lived in Makhnivka, and worked as tutors for the children of local wealthy families. His childhood was spent with his grandmother in Makhnivka. From 1840 to 1844, he was educated by his mother alongside her students. In 1844, Antonowicz continued his studies in the Richelieu Lyceum, Odesa, moving to the 2nd Odesa Gymnasium in 1848. In 1850, he enrolled into the Medical Academy of St. Vladimir Imperial University in Kyiv at the insistence of his mother; he graduated in 1855. During his studies, he joined the circles of Polish democratically minded students and took part in the preparations for what became the January Uprising, under the auspice of the London-based Polish Democratic Society. From 1855 to 1856, he practiced medicine at Berdychiv and Chornobyl. After the death of his mother in 1856, he returned to St. Vladimir where he studied history and philology under professor Vitaly Shulgin. In 1860, he defended his dissertation About the Trade of Negroes. == Early political activities ==

In 1857, he co-founded 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. During that time, Antonovych was under investigation for traveling with Tadei Rylskyi around Ukrainian villages. == Career ==

In July 1863, Antonovych was appointed as a chancellery official to the Governor General of the Southwestern Krai, with an official designation to the Provisional Commission for Review of Ancient Acts (now the Russian Archaeographic Commission). In April 1864, he became its chief editor and held this role until 1880. In 1897, together with the Ukrainian nobleman Oleksandr Konysky, he established the All-Ukrainian Public Organization. == Personal views ==

Throughout his career, the imperial censors and oppressive political atmosphere prevented Antonovych from openly expressing his political views, which tended to be egalitarian and somewhat anarchistic. In addition to being a populist, he was a pioneer of positivist methodology in history, the founder of the so-called "Kyiv Documentalist School" of Ukrainian historians, and mentor to Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Kateryna Antonovych-Melnyk. == Awards ==

In 1870, Antonovych was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav, 2nd degree. Dmytro Bahaliy, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Mytrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky and Ivan Lynnychenko. ==Personal life==

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. ==Commemoration==

The Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine bore the name of Antonovych in 1941–1943, when its activities were overseen by Oleh Olzhych and Oleksander Ohloblyn under the auspices of the Melnyk wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. In modern Ukraine several streets are named after the historian. ==References==