Ivan Krypiakevych
Encyclopedia
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. He was a specialist on Ukrainian history of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, writing extensively on the social history of western Ukraine and the political history of the Ukrainian Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s, especially during the time of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...
. He also wrote many textbooks for school use, popularizations, and some historical fiction for children.
Austrian Period
Krypiakevych was born and raised in LvivLviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
(Lemberg) in Austrian Galicia and studied history under Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century...
at Lviv University
Lviv University
The Lviv University or officially the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv is the oldest continuously operating university in Ukraine...
. He wrote his 1911 doctorate on "The Cossacks and Bathory's Privileges," a study of the origins of the Ukrainian Cossacks legally registered with the Polish government. From 1908 to 1914, he published extensively in Galician Ukrainian journals and magazines and took part in the Prosvita
Prosvita
Prosvita is a society created in the nineteenth century in Ukrainian Galicia for preserving and developing Ukrainian culture and education among population....
, or "Enlightenment" movement geared to raise the educational level of the Galician Ukrainian peasantry. From 1905, he began publishing in the scholarly journal of the Shevchenko Scientific Society
Shevchenko Scientific Society
The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. Unlike the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine the society is a public organization that was reestablished in Ukraine in 1989 after almost 50 years of exile...
, which under the leadership of Hrushevsky became a kind of unofficial Ukrainian Academy of Sciences serving the Ukrainian people on both sides of the Austrian-Russian border. From 1911 to 1939, he taught at the Polish gymnasia (High Schools) at Zhovkva
Zhovkva
Zhovkva is a city in the Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine, north of Lviv. It is the administrative center of the Zhovkivskyi Raion . The current estimated population is 13,500.-History:...
and Rohatyn
Rohatyn
Rohatyn is a city located on the Hnyla Lypa River in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, in western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Rohatyn Raion .The current estimated population is around 8,800 .-History:...
and at the Academic Gymnasium in Lviv. From 1918 to 1919, he taught at the newly established Ukrainian University at Kamianets-Podilskyi
Kamianets-Podilskyi
Kamyanets-Podilsky or Kamienets-Podolsky is a city located on the Smotrych River in western Ukraine, to the north-east of Chernivtsi...
but returned to Galicia (now absorbed into Poland
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
) at the fall of the Ukrainian People's Republic
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic or Ukrainian National Republic was a republic that was declared in part of the territory of modern Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, eventually headed by Symon Petliura.-Revolutionary Wave:...
to the Soviets
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Interwar Galicia
During the interwar period, Krypiakevych, being excluded from a university position by the Polish regime, continued to teach at various gymnasia and to actively support the Shevchenko Scientific Society. From 1921 to 1924, he was a professor of the Secret Ukrainian University in Lviv and was secretary of its senate. From 1934 to 1939, he taught at the Greek Catholic Theological Academy. All of his major works during this period appeared in the Ukrainian and not the Polish language. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he remained active in various educational and public projects such as preserving the gravesites of fallen Ukrainian soldiers and promoting tourist literature about Ukrainian Galicia. From 1934, he was head of the Historical Section of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.Unlike many other students of Hrushevsky, Krypiakevych never politically or intellectually rebelled against the authority of his mentor, Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century...
. Although he did turn away from Hrushevsky's populism to a pro-state interpretation of Ukrainian history, he revered his mentor's memory and in 1935 published a short biography of him.
Soviet Annexation and War
The 1939 fall of the Polish Republic and the Soviet annexationSoviet annexation of Western Ukraine, 1939–1940
On the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union , the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern regions of Poland , with Galicia and Volhynia, facing little Polish opposition and occupying the principal city of...
of Galicia brought far-reaching changes to academic as well as social and political life and Krypiakevych was appointed professor of history at the reorganized and partially Sovietized Lviv University
Lviv University
The Lviv University or officially the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv is the oldest continuously operating university in Ukraine...
.
The university was suppressed during the German occupation but Krypiakevych found work at the Ukrainian Publishing House in Lviv. Unlike many of his Galician Ukrainian colleagues, mostly for family reasons, he decided to remain in Lviv after the German retreat westwards.
Soviet Period
The return of the Soviets brought renewed repressions to the west Ukrainian intelligentsia and in 1946 Krypiakevych was deported east to Kiev with many of his colleagues. For several years, he experienced political persecution, but in 1948, he was able to return to Lviv, and, with the help of the Soviet Ukrainian historian, Fedir Shevchenko, learned to adapt his historical writing to Soviet conditions and to the Soviet censors. From 1951, he headed the Institute of Social Sciences at the Lviv branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSRUkrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
. In 1958, he was elected an "Academic" of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He died in 1967, a respected member of the Soviet Ukrainian historical profession. Ivan Krypiakevych was buried at Lychakivskiy Cemetery
Lychakivskiy Cemetery
-History:Since its creation in 1787 as Łyczakowski Cemetery, it has been the main necropolis of the city's inteligentsia, middle and upper classes. Initially the cemetery was located on several hills in the borough of Lychakiv, following the imperial Austro-Hungarian edict ordering that all...
, Lviv.
Major works
Krypiakevych's early works dealt with the early modern history of the City of Lviv and the social history of Galicia. Thereafter, he turned to the history of the Cossacks and published his dissertation on the BáthoryBáthory
The Báthory were a Hungarian noble family of the Gutkeled clan. The family rose to significant influence in Central Europe during the late Middle Ages, holding high military, administrative and ecclesiastical positions in the Kingdom of Hungary...
reforms; he then undertook further studies of the Cossacks in international politics, and then the Cossack "state" created by Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...
in 1648. Most of these works were published in the "Memoirs of the Shevchenko Scientific Society
Shevchenko Scientific Society
The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. Unlike the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine the society is a public organization that was reestablished in Ukraine in 1989 after almost 50 years of exile...
."
During the period of Polish ascendency, Krypiakevych co-authored and published many popularizations, the most important of which were his "Great History of Ukraine" (1935), his "History of the Ukrainian Army" (1936), and his "History of Ukrainian Culture" (1937). His textbooks of Ukrainian history were widely used both in Galicia and also among Ukrainians in North America. At this time, he also prepared a new scholarly "History of Ukraine" which was only published in 1949 in the west under the pseudonym 'Ivan Kholmsky'.
During the Soviet period, Krypiakevych was known as an expert on the era of Khmelnytsky and on the occasion of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Treaty of Pereiaslav between the Cossacks and the Russian Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
his "Bohdan Khmelnytsky" appeared in a very luxurious edition (1954). During the 1960s, he was very active at editing historical journals and mentoring younger Ukrainian historians, but a few years after his death in 1967, the Shelest Renaissance, which had briefly occurred under the protection of Ukrainian Communist Party leader, Petro Shelest
Petro Shelest
Petro Yukhymovych Shelest was the First Secretary of the Communist party in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Petro Yukhymovych Shelest (February 14, 1908 - January 22, 1996) was the First Secretary of the Communist party in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Petro Yukhymovych Shelest...
, and had made possible so many of the cultural and academic achievements of the 1960s, came to an end (1972), and Krypiakevych's scholarly legacy was partly repressed. His monograph on the medieval Principality of Galicia-Volhynia only appeared posthumously in 1984.