Popovych, Omelian

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Popovych, Omelian

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Popovych, Omelian [Попович, Омелян;

Popovyč, Omeljan], b 18 August 1856 in Vatra
Dornei, Bukovyna, d 22 March 1930 in
Zalishchyky, Galicia. Community activist,
pedagogue, and publicist. He graduated
(1876) from the teachers' seminary in
Chernivtsi and then taught in the city until
1892. He was the commissioner of elementary

schools for the Bukovynian Provincial School

Board in 1895–1906. Popovych was
designated as the first provincial inspector of
Ukrainian elementary schools and teachers'
seminaries in Bukovyna in 1906, and
remained at this post until 1912.

Popovych was a leading Ukrainian civic figure

in Bukovyna. He was the long-standing
secretary (from 1878) and then head of Ruska
Besida in Bukovyna and was involved in Ruska Shkola, People's Home, and other societies.
He served as a coeditor or editor of the newspaper Bukovyna (1885–92), the Biblioteka dlia
molodezhy, selian i mishchan (Library for Youths, Peasants, and Burghers, 1885–94), later
Lastivka (Swallow) series, and the almanacs (1885–1918) of Ruska Besida. A member of the
Bukovynian Diet in 1911–18, Popovych emerged in October 1918 as head of the Ukrainian
Regional Committee, and then as president of the short-lived Ukrainian Bukovynian state. He
was also the Bukovynian representative and then a vice-president of the Ukrainian National
Rada of the Western Ukrainian National Republic and head of its school commission. After
the occupation of Bukovyna by Romanian forces late in 1918, Popovych emigrated to Galicia,
where he was an inspector of elementary schools and teachers' seminaries for the Ridna
Shkola society.

Popovych wrote a number of readers and grammars, most notable among which were

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Popovych, Omelian

Hramatyka dlia shkil narodnykh (A Grammar for Elementary Schools, 3 vols, 1893–4) and
Ruthenisches Sprachbuch für Mittelschulen (3 vols, 1897–1902). In the 1920s he wrote four
Ukrainian grammar texts for Galician schools, which were approved by the Polish
educational authorities. He edited Gesetz und Verordnungsblatt für bukowiner Schulwesen and
headed the Ukrainian section of Bukowiner Schule. He wrote numerous articles on pedagogy
and literature, published the poetry collections Bukovyna (1875) and Dumka (Thought, 1886),
and translated various works. He compiled the Rus'ko-nimets'kyi slovar (Ruthenian-German
Dictionary, 1904), whose second edition appeared in 1911 under the title Ruthenisch-deutsches
Wörterbuch, with 25,000 entries. His memoirs, Vidrodzhennia Bukovyny (The Rebirth of
Bukovyna), were published in 1933.

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Popovych, Omelian entry:

1 Bukovyna
2 Bukovyna
3 Chernivtsi
4 Education
5 Lexicography

6 Populism, Western Ukrainian

A referral to this page is found in 6 entries.

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