“THE FIRST UKRAINIAN PUBLIC FIGURE” OF YELISAVETGRAD

Abstract

The article reveals the insufficient researched national and patriotic, cultural and educational activities of Mykola Fedorovich Fedorovsky, who was a hard worker in the national field in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries. Being a talented social activist, a community organiser, an educator, a publicist, a philanthropist and a military personnel, he worked hard on the claim of the ukrainian culture and national self-identification among the population of the Yelisavetgrad Region. That was a brave and risky work in the conditions when the cultural and educational policy of tsarism was closely interwined with the national one for the sake of gradual fusion of all national regions in one state through such things as denationalization and forced russification. Besides, the military service specificity also foresaw a number of limitations. Nevertheless, the activist made a great effort to form an extended successful history of the Yelisavetgrad crafts and literacy specialized school and the Society for the dissemination of literacy and crafts. Those unique and specific institutions refined the cultural and educational level of the population significantly. Different charitable Sunday reading rooms of progressive literature were organized by the efforts of the teachers and students of the Yelisavetgrad crafts and literacy specialized school, members of the Yelisavetgrad literacy and crafts society among the townspeople and in addition they arranged various dramatic performances, different concerts, art exhibitions and a free public library-reading room was established. Besides, an active organisational work of M. Fedorovsky was a fundamental part in the formation of the first professional Ukrainian Coryphaei theater. The article also shows a number of examples where Mykola Fedorovich Fedorovsky propagandized and expanded systemically and persistently the ukrainian language, art, national and patriotic education for the sake of development of ukrainization of the region. The Yelisavetgrad prolific period of life of the dedicatee was the time when local progressive intelligence was developing and clustering on a national and humanistic basis where the central role of M. Fedorovsky was undisputable.