Ivan Vahylevych

Who was Ivan Vahylevych?

Ivan Vahylevych, b 2 September 1811 in the village of Yasen, Stanislawow powiat, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, d 10 May 1866 in Lemberg. Romantic poet, philologist, and ethnographer of the Galician revival.

While studying at University of Lviv and at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv, he associated with Markiyan Shashkevych and Yakiv Holovatsky, and the three of them formed the Ruthenian Triad. Vahylevych neglected his studies at the university frequently in order to make field trips to villages in western Ukraine, where he conducted archeological and ethnographic fieldwork. Because of his populist activities, cultural nationalist views, and correspondence with scholars in the Russian Empire, namely Mikhail Pogodin, Izmail Sreznevsky, and the Ukrainians Mykhailo Maksymovych and Osyp Bodiansky, he suffered harassment by the church and Austrian civil authorities. In 1846, he was ordained. He served as a pastor in Nestanychi for a while. During the Revolution of 1848–1849 in the Habsburg monarchy he supported a democratic Polish-Ukrainian political federation.