Ruthenian Triad

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Ruthenian Triad (Ruska triitsia). A Galician literary group

named after the number of the predominant members,
Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan
Vahylevych, which existed in the late 1830s, while the three
were students at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary
in Lviv. Since the group came into being during the period
of romanticism, it retained the predominant interests and
features of that movement—an interest in folklore and
history and a striving for Pan-Slavic unity. Its Slavophilism
was noticeable in the use of Old Slavic pseudonyms: Ruslan
by Shashkevych, Dalibor by Vahylevych, and Yaroslav by
Holovatsky. The group united around itself other youths
who were burning with a desire to work for the good of
their people. Some of them (Hryhorii Ilkevych, M.
Kulchytsky) were also involved in Polish revolutionary
circles; most, however, were engaged in collecting folk oral
literature, studying the history of Ukraine, translating the
works of other Slavic authors, and writing their own verses
and treatises. The members of the group maintained that the
‘Ruthenians’ of Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia were all part of one Ukrainian
people who had their own language, culture, and history. They emulated the Ukrainians
under Russian rule, and were especially influenced by Ivan Kotliarevsky's Eneïda (Aeneid,
1789, 1809, 1820s), the collections of folk songs by Mykhailo Maksymovych and Izmail
Sreznevsky, the grammar of Oleksii Pavlovsky, and some of the early works of the Kharkiv
Romantic School. They made several attempts at publishing their own works. Their first two
collections, ‘Syn Rusi’ [The Son of Rus’, 1833] and ‘Zoria’ [The Star, 1834]), were not
published. Their third collection, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), was
published in Budapest, but 800 of the original 1,000 copies printed were immediately
confiscated. Although the collection was short-lived, its importance was immense, in that it
was written in the spoken Ukrainian and not in the ‘learned’ yazychiie; it thus initiated the
use of vernacular Ukrainian language for literature in the Ukrainian lands in the Habsburg

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Ruthenian Triad

Empire. The Pan-Slavic sentiment in the miscellany makes it similar to the Slovak poet Jan
Kollár's collection of sonnets Slávy dcera ([Goddess] Slava's Daughter, 1824), which was to a
great degree the inspiration for the Ruthenian Triad.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Shakh, S. O. Markiian Shashkevych i halyts’ke vidrodzhennia (Paris–Munich 1961)
Humeniuk, M.; Kravchenko, Ie. (comps). M. Shashkevych, I. Vahylevych, Ia. Holovats’kyi:
Bibliohrafichnyi pokazhchyk (Lviv 1962)
Kozik, J. The Ukrainian National Movement in Galicia: 1815–1849 (Edmonton 1986)
Petrash, O. ‘Rus’ka triitsia': M. Shashkevych, I. Vahylevych, Ia. Holovats’kyi ta ïkhni literaturni
poslidovnyky, 2nd rev edn (Kyiv 1986)
Steblii, F. (ed). ‘Rus’ka triitsia’ v istoriï suspil’nopolitychnoho rukhu i kul’tury Ukraïny (Kyiv 1987)
Kyrchiv, Roman. Etnohrafichno-fol’klorystychna diial’nist' ‘Rus'koï triitsi’ (Kyiv 1990)
Il’nyts’ka, Luïza. ‘Rus’ka triitsia’—Markiian Shashkevych, Ivan Vahylevych, Iakiv Holovats’kyi:
bibliohrafichnyi pokazhchyk (1834–1990 rr.) (Lviv 1993)

Danylo Husar Struk

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Ruthenian Triad entry:

1 Galicia
2 History of the Ukrainian church
3 History of Ukraine
4 Holovatsky, Yakiv

5 Levytsky, Mykhailo
6 Literary criticism
7 Literature
8 Lviv
9 Mohylnytsky, Antin

10 Mohylnytsky, Ivan
11 Mokh, Rudolf
12 Music
13 Pan-Slavism
14 Poetry

15 Populism, Western Ukrainian

16 Romanticism
17 Rusalka Dnistrovaia
18 Šafařík, Pavel

19 Shashkevych, Markiian
20 Ustyianovych, Mykola

+ 20 Records >>

A referral to this page is found in 21 entries.

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Ruthenian Triad

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