Lvovsky, Ludmyla & Mykhaylo Amway

 Lvovsky

• Lvovsky (masculine), Lvovskaya (feminine), or Lvovskoye (neuter) may refer to:
• Lvovsky, Moscow Oblast, an urban-type settlement in Moscow Oblast, Russia
• Lvovsky, Tver Oblast, a settlement in Tver Oblast, Russia
• Lvovsky, name of several other rural localities in Russia
• Lvovskoye, Tver Oblast, a village in Tver Oblast, Russia
• Lvovskoye, name of several other rural localities in Russia

See also

• Caecilie Lvovsky, birth name of Celia Lovsky (1897–1979), Austrian-American actress
• Lev, name from which "Lvovsky" is derived
• Lvov (disambiguation)
• Lvovo

Mykhaylo

He contributed to life sciences, particularly botany and zoology, linguistics, folklore, anthropology, history, literary studies, and archaeology.

He was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Language and Literature Department in 1871. Maksymovych was also a member of the Nestor Chronicler Historical Association in Kiev in 1872-1931.

Life

Maksymovych was born into an old Zaporozhian Cossack family who had a modest estate on Mykhailova Hora near Prokhorivka, county of Zolotonosha in Poltava Governorate (now Cherkasy Oblast) in Left Bank Ukraine. 

After receiving his high school education at Novgorod-Severskiy Gymnasium, he studied natural science and philology at Moscow University's Faculty of Philosophy and later at the Faculty of Medicine, graduating with his first degree in 1823, his second in 1827; then he remained at Moscow University for further academic work in botany. He obtained his doctorate in 1833 and was appointed professor of botany at Moscow University.

He taught biology and was university botanical garden director. During this period, he published extensively on botany and also on folklore and literature, and got to know many of the leading lights of Russian intellectual life including the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, and Russian writer, Nikolay Gogol, and shared with them his growing interest in Cossack history.

He was named professor of Russian literature at the newly-created Saint Vladimir University in Kiev in 1834 and became the first rector of the university, a role he maintained until 1835. (The Russian government built this university to limit Polish dominance in Ukraine, and Maksymovych was partly an instrument of this purpose). 

Maksymovych developed wide-ranging university growth plans that finally included getting prominent Ukrainians and Russians like Nikolay Kostomarov and Taras Shevchenko to lecture.

In 1847 he was severely moved by the arrest, incarceration and exile of the members of Saints Cyril and Methodius' Pan-Slavic Brotherhood, many of whom, like poet Taras Shevchenko, were his friends or classmates. Then he buried in scholarship, publishing widely.

He married in 1853 and in 1857, hoping to ease his poor financial circumstances, travelled to Moscow to find work. Shevchenko returned from exile in 1858, visited him in Moscow, and when Maksymovych returned to Mykhailova Hora, visited him there. Shevchenko made portraits of Maksimovich and his wife, Maria.

In his final years, Maksimovich committed himself increasingly to history and engaged in extended discussions with Russian historians Mikhail Pogodin and Nikolay Kostomarov.

The physical sciences and philosophy

In the 1820s and 1830s, Maksymovych wrote various biology and botany textbooks. His first scholarly publication on botany was published in 1823 on the Flowering Kingdom System. He also published layman's popular botanical publications. He brought this "populist" approach to science into his folklore, literature, and history publications.

He wrote The Book of Naum About God's Great World in Moscow in 1833, a popularly written exhibition of geology, the solar system, and the universe in religious attire for plain folk. This book proved to be a best-seller, and went through eleven editions, giving Maksimovich with long-term income.

In 1833, Maksymovych published "A Letter on Philosophy," reflecting his respect for Schelling's "Nature-Philosophy." In this letter, he argued that genuine philosophy was built on love and that philosophy was all fields of structured, systematic knowledge that sought to recognise the inner meaning and unity of everything, but mainly history. Maksimovich approached Baader, Hegel and Schelling's perspectives with his concentration on history.

Folklore

Maksymovych released Little Russian Folksongs in 1827, one of Eastern Europe's first collections of folk songs. It comprised 127 songs, including historical songs, day-to-day songs, and rituals. The collection signalled a fresh turn to the common people, the folk, which marked the beginning of the new romantic era. Everywhere it was read, it stimulated the interest of literate classes in plain peasant life. Maksymovych published two collections in 1834 and 1849.

In his folk song collections, Maksymovych used a new etymology-based Ukrainian language spelling. Although this Maksymovychivka looked relatively close to Russian, it was a preliminary step towards a distinct orthography based on phonetics that was subsequently proposed by younger contemporary Maksimovich, Panteleimon Kulish. The latter provides the basis of modern written Ukrainian.

Overall, Maksymovych claimed to notice some basic psychological differences, indicating national character distinctions between Ukrainian and Russian folk music; he regarded the former more spontaneous and vibrant, the latter more obedient. Many of his contemporaries like his younger contemporary, historian Nikolay Kostomarov, and others held such ideas.

In 1856, Maksymovych released the first section of his "Ukrainian Villager Days and Months," summarising many years of Ukrainian peasants observation. In it, he wrote up the Ukrainian village's folk customs by calendar year. (Full work was published in Soviet times only.)

Language and literature

In 1839, Maksymovych wrote his History of Old Russian Literature dealing with Russian literature's so-called Kievan period. Maksymovych found a solid continuity between Ruthenia's language and literature (Kievan Rus') and Cossack's. Indeed, he seems to have felt the Old Ruthenian language was akin to that of Old Czech to modern Polish or modern Slovak in relation to modern Russian; that is, one influenced, but not the same as the other. 

He later translated the epic Tale of Igor's Campaign into both modern Russian and Ukrainian verses. Maksimovich's literary works included poetry and almanacks devoted to Russia.

History

Maksymovych worked actively in history from the 1850s through the 1870s, especially Russian and Ukrainian history. He criticised Normanist theory that connected Kievan Rus to Scandinavian origins, preferring to emphasise its Slavic roots. 

But he disputed the Russian historian, Mikhail Pogodin, who claimed Kievan Rus was initially populated by northern Great Russians. Maksimovich argued that Kievan lands were never fully de-populated, even after the Mongol invasions, and that Ruthenians and their direct ancestors always inhabited them. He was the first to claim Russian history's "Lithuanian Period.

" Maksymovych also worked on the history of Kiev, Cossack Hetmanate, Bohdan Khmelnytsky's insurrection, the Haidamak uprisings against Poland, and other issues. Overall, he sympathised with these numerous Cossack rebels, so much so that the Russian censor rejected his first work on the Haidamaks. Many of his major works were critical analyses and revisions of other historians' publications, such Mikhail Pogodin and Nikolay Kostomarov.

Slavistics

Regarding Slavic studies, Maksimovich commented on the many theses of Czech philologist Josef Dobrovský and Slovak scholar Pavel Jozef Šafárik. Like them, he separated the Slavic family into two broad groups, one West and one East. 

But then divided the western group into two more parts: a northwestern group and a southwestern group. (Dobrovsky clubbed Russians with the South Slavs.) Maksymovych specifically disagreed to Dobrovsky's claim that the dominant Eastern or Russian group was homogeneous, without major divisions or dialects. Maksymovych, this eastern group, split into two distinct languages, South Russian and North Russian. 

He separated South Russian into two distinct dialects, Ruthenian and Red Ruthenian/Galician. The North Russian language, he split into four primary dialects, the Muscovite being the most developed, but also the youngest. 

He also seems to have considered Belarusian a distinct language, midway between North and South Russian, though significantly closer to the former. Writing in the early twentieth century, Croatian scholar Vatroslav Jagić considered Maksimovich's theory a valuable contribution to Slavic philology.

Maksymovych also argued in favour of the autonomous genesis of the spoken Old Rus languages, deeming them separate from the book language of the period, based on Slavonic Church. Maksimovich also published some critical notes on Pavel Jozef Šafárik's Slavic globe map, written on the Lusatian Sorbs and Polish proverbs. Maksimovich also penned a brief autobiography published in 1904. His correspondence was broad and meaningful.

Legacy

Maksymovych was a pioneer of his time and one of the last "universal men" in many aspects to be able to give original works to both sciences and humanities. His works in biology and physical sciences reflected a concern for the common man—love for his fellow human being, Schelling's philosophy at work—and his works in literature, folklore, and history, often phrased to his scholarly opponents as friendly public "letters," pointing to new directions in telling the storey of the common people. But Maksymovych "awakened" new national impulses among his countrymen, especially the younger generation. He influenced a lot of his younger contemporaries, including poet Taras Shevchenko, historian Nikolay Kostomarov, writer Panteleimon Kulish, and many more.

Kiev University library is named in his honour.

Further reading

• Dmytro Doroshenko, "A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography", Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US, Vol. V-VI (1957), section on Maksymovych, pp. 119–23.
• George S. N. Luckyj, Between Gogol and Ševčenko: Polarity in the Literary Ukraine, 1798-1847 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1971), passim. Good on his relations with Gogol, Shevchenko, Kulish, and Kostomarov.
• Mykhailo Maksymovych, Kiev iavilsia gradom velikim (Kiev: Lybid, 1994). Contains a collection of Maksymovych's writings on Ukraine, his brief autobiography, and a biographical introduction by V. Zamlynsky. Texts in Ukrainian and Russian.
• Mykhailo Hrushevsky, "'Malorossiiskie pesni' Maksymovycha i stolittia ukrainskoi naukovoi pratsi", ["The 'Little Russian Songs' of Maksymovych and the Centennial of Ukrainian Scholarly Work"] Ukraina, no.6 (1927), 1-13; reprinted in Ukrainskyi istoryk, XXI, 1-4 (1984), 132-147. Incisive and important essay by the most famous of modern Ukrainian historians.
• M. B. Tomenko, "'Shchyryi Malorosiianyn': Vydatnyi vchenyi Mykhailo Maksymovych", ['A Sincere Little Russian': The Outstanding Scholar Mykhailo Maksymovych] in Ukrainska ideia. Pershi rechnyky (Kyiv: Znannia, 1994), pp. 80–96, An excellent short sketch.
• M. Zh., "Movoznavchi pohliady M. O. Maksymovycha", Movoznavstvo, no. 5 (1979), 46-50. Makes the claim that Maksymovych was one of the first to recognise the threefold division of the Slavic languages.
• Article on Maksymovych, in the Dovidnyk z istorii Ukrainy, ed. I. Pidkova and R. Shust (Kyiv: Heneza, 2002), pp. 443–4. Also available on-line.

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