1871–1942
Ahatanhel Krymskyi
Orientalist, secretary of the Academy
At 18 he knew 8 languages, and over his life he mastered more than 50 more. Ahatanhel Krymskyi laid the foundations of Oriental studies in Ukraine, became one of the first members of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and died in custody after his arrest by the NKVD.
Key accomplishments
- One of the founding academicians of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1918), its permanent secretary and head of its Historical-Philological Division
- Works on the history of Islam, the Arabs, Turkey and Persia and their literatures; a founder of Oriental studies in Ukraine
- Supervised The Main Rules of Ukrainian Orthography (1921); scholarly editor of the Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary (1924–1933)
- Refuted the Pogodin–Sobolevsky hypothesis that the language of ancient Kyiv was not Ukrainian
- The poetry collection Palm Branches, the novel Andrii Lahovskyi, and translations from Arabic, Persian and Turkish
How many languages can one person know?
At 18, Ahatanhel Krymskyi knew 8 languages, and by the end of his life he had mastered more than 50 more. That is what the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine says. He was born in 1871 in Volodymyr-Volynskyi (today Volodymyr) and grew up in Zvenyhorodka. His family had Crimean Tatar and Belarusian roots: its founder was a mullah from Bakhchysarai who converted to Christianity. Krymskyi himself called himself a conscious Ukrainian.
An Arabist who wrote in Ukrainian
Krymskyi studied Arabic at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow and later became a professor there. In 1896–1898 he worked in Lebanon and Syria. Influenced by Mykhailo Drahomanov, with whom he also argued in the press, he took up the Ukrainian language and history. He corresponded with Lesya Ukrainka and Ivan Franko, wrote poetry and prose, and wrote histories of Islam, the Arabs, Turkey and Persia.
How an Orientalist built an academy
In 1918 Volodymyr Vernadskyi invited him to Kyiv to help draft the law on the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The academy was founded under Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi, and Krymskyi became one of its first academicians and its permanent secretary. He supervised The Main Rules of Ukrainian Orthography (1921).
After the show trial of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” (1929–1930), Krymskyi was dismissed from all his academic posts. In July 1941 the NKVD arrested him on charges of Ukrainian nationalism. He died in a prison hospital in Kustanai (Kazakhstan); encyclopedias give the date as 25 January 1942. He was rehabilitated in 1957.
Why it matters today
Krymskyi showed that Ukrainian scholarship could be world-class and still speak Ukrainian. The Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine bears his name.
