Borys Hrinchenko

Who was Borys Hrinchenko?

Borys Dmytrovych Hrinchenko 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. 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. 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". 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.