Mykhaylo Maksymovych
Encyclopedia
Mykhailo Oleksandrovych Maksymovych (also spelled Mykhailo; ; September 3, 1804-November 10, 1873) was a famous Ukrainian
naturalist
, historian and writer.
He contributed to the life sciences, especially botany
and zoology
, and to linguistics
, folklore
, ethnography
, history, literary studies, and archaeology
. A well-known Slavist
, he was a central figure of the Ukrainian national awakening of the nineteenth century.
family which owned a small estate in Poltava
Province (now in Cherkasy Oblast
) in Left-bank Ukraine
. After receiving his high school education at Novhorod-Siverskyi
Gymnasium in Ukraine, he studied botany and philology
at Moscow University, graduating with his first degree in 1823, his second in 1827, and his third in 1832; thereafter, he remained at the university in Moscow for further academic work. He taught biology and was director of the botanical garden at the university. 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 the Ukrainian-born writer, Nikolai Gogol
, and shared his growing interest in Ukrainian history with them.
In 1834, he was appointed professor of Russian literature at the newly created Saint Vladimir Kiev University
and also became the university's first rector. (This university had been established by the Russian government to reduce Polish influence in Ukraine and Maksymovych was, in part, an instrument of this policy; the rapid growth of Ukrainian national feeling was its unintended consequence
.) Maksymovych elaborated wide-ranging plans for the expansion of the university which eventually included attracting eminent Ukrainians like Gogol, Mykola Kostomarov, and Taras Shevchenko
to teach there. After a short time, however, the pressures of the reactionary Imperial government, which feared political conspiracies among the largely Polish student body, and ill health, forced him to retire both from his rectorship and also his professorship. Maksymovych tried to protect the Poles on faculty and the Polish students from political repression but had little success in this and Tsar Nicholas I actually shut down the institution for one whole year. Thereafter, Maksymovych lived quietly at his estate at Mykhailova Hora in central Ukraine and published extensively on Ukrainian folklore, literature, and history; he made several attempts to return to university teaching, but the Imperial Ministry of Education, fearing his Ukrainophile views, prevented this from happening.
In 1847, he was deeply affected by the arrest, imprisonment, and exile of the members of the Ukrainophile and Pan-Slavic Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
, many of whom, like the poet Taras Shevchenko, were his friends or students. Thereafter, he buried himself in scholarship, publishing extensively.
In 1853, he married, and in 1857, in hope of relieving his severe financial situation, went to Moscow to find work. In 1858, Shevchenko returning from exile, visited him in Moscow, and when Maksymovych returned to Mykhailova Hora, visited him there as well. At this time, Shevchenko painted portraits of both Maksymovych and his wife, Maria.
During his final years, Maksymovych devoted himself more and more to history and engaged in extensive debates with the Russian historian, Mikhail Pogodin
and the Ukrainian historian, Mykola Kostomarov.
Despite his isolation in the Ukrainian countryside, Maksymovych participated in the work of many scholarly societies and shortly before his death was elected a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. At the time of his death, the Ukrainian historian, Volodymyr Antonovych
, and the Ukrainian literary figure, Oleksander Kotliarevsky, were preparing a great three volume edition of his collected works.
" approach to science, he carried over into his writings on folklore, literature, and history.
In 1833 in Moscow, he published The Book of Naum About God's Great World, which was a popularly written exposition of geology, the solar system, and the universe, in religious garb for the common folk. This book proved to be a best-seller and went through eleven editions, providing Maksymovych with some royalties for many long years.
Also in 1833, Maksymovych published "A Letter on Philosophy" which reflected his admiration for Schelling's "Nature-Philosophy." In this letter, he declared that true philosophy
was based on love and that all branches of organized, systematic knowledge, which strove to recognise the internal meaning and unity of things, but most especially history, were philosophy. With his emphasis upon history, Maksymovych approached the views of Baader
and Hegel as well as Schelling
. When he shortly later moved to Ukraine, he was one of the first to introduce Schelling's ideas to that country.
era which was then beginning. This work had an enormous influence upon Maksymovych's contemporaries, both in eastern Ukraine, and also in Austrian Galicia where many Ukrainians lived. Everywhere that it was read, it aroused the interest of the literate classes in the life of the common folk. Thereafter, others too, both in Russia proper and also in Ukraine, began the collection and publication of folksongs. In 1834 and in 1849, Maksymovych published two further collections.
In his collections of folksongs, Maksymovych used a new orthography for the Ukrainian language which was based on etymology. Although this Maksymovychivka looked quite similar to Russian, it was a first step towards an independent orthography, based on phonetics which was eventually proposed by Maksymovych's younger contemporary, Panteleimon Kulish. The latter forms the basis of the modern written Ukrainian language.
In general, Maksymovych claimed to see some basic psychological differences, reflecting differences in national character, between Ukrainian and Russian folk songs; he thought the former more spontaneous and lively, the latter more submissive. Such opinions were shared by many of his contemporaries such as his younger contemporary, the historian Mykola Kostomarov and others.
In 1856, Maksymovych published the first part of his "Days and Months of the Ukrainian Villager" which summed up many years of observation of the Ukrainian peasantry. In it, he laid out the folk customs of the Ukrainian village according to the calendar year. (The full work was only published in Soviet times.)
and that of Cossack
and modern Ukraine
. Indeed, he seems to have thought that the Old Ukrainian language stood in relation to modern Russian in a way similar to that of Old Czech
to modern Polish
or modern Slovak
; that is, that one influenced but was not the same as the other. Later on, he also translated the epic Tale of Igor's Campaign into both modern Russian and modern Ukrainian verse.
Maksymovych's literary works included poetry and almanacs with much material devoted to Ukraine. One of his poems was dedicated to his fellow "Ukrainian national awakener", the poet and painter, Taras Shevchenko
, whose premature death made a great impression on him.
at the beginning of the twentieth century. Maksymovych also worked on the history of the city of Kiev
, of Cossack Ukraine, of the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky
, the Haidamak uprisings against Poland, and other subjects. In general, he sympathized with these various Cossack
rebels, so much so, in fact, that his first work on the Haidamaks was banned by the Russian censor. Many of his most important works were critical studies and corrections of the publications of other historians, like the Russian, Mikhail Pogodin
, and the Ukrainian Mykola Kostomarov.
and the Slovak scholar, Pavel Jozef Šafárik
. Like them, he divided the Slavic family into two major groups, a western group and an eastern group. But then he sub-divided the western group into two further parts: a north-western group and a south-western group. (Dobrovsky had lumped the Russians together with the South Slavs.) Maksymovych particularly objected to Dobrovsky's contention that the major eastern or Russian group was unified, without major divisions or dialects. This eastern group, Maksymovych divided into two independent languages, South Russian and North Russian. The South Russian language, he divided into two major dialects, Ukrainian
and Red Russian/Galician. The North Russian language, he divided into four major dialects of which he thought the Muscovite the most developed, but also the youngest. In addition to this, he also seems to have considered Belarusian to be an independent language, intermediate between North and South Russian, but much closer to the former. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Croatian scholar, V. Jagic, thought Maksymovych's scheme to have been a solid contribution to Slavic philology.
Maksymovych also argued in favour of the independent origin of the spoken Old Rus languages, thinking them separate from the book language of the time which was based on Church Slavonic, and, of course, he traced the antiquity of the differences between Ukrainian and Russian to Kievan Rus.
Maksymovych also made some critical remarks on Pavel Jozef Šafárik
's map of the Slavic world, wrote on the Lusatian Sorbs, and on Polish proverb
s. Of course, a large part of his historical work dealt with the mutual relations between the Ukrainians and the Russians and the Ukrainians and the Poles.
Maksymovych, as well, wrote a brief autobiography which was first published in 1904. His correspondence was large and significant.
, the historian Mykola Kostomarov, the writer Panteleimon Kulish, and many others.
His life was that of a true gatherer of a national heritage, heritage gathering typically being the first stage of the Ukrainian national movement which intermittently but repeatedly gathered strength after his time.
The library of Kiev University is named in his honour.
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
, historian and writer.
He contributed to the life sciences, especially botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
and zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, and to linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, history, literary studies, and archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
. A well-known Slavist
Slavistics
Slavic studies or Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, Slavic languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist who researches Slavistics, a Slavic or Slavonic scholar...
, he was a central figure of the Ukrainian national awakening of the nineteenth century.
Life
Maksymovych was born into an old Ukrainian CossackCossack
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...
family which owned a small estate in Poltava
Poltava
Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....
Province (now in Cherkasy Oblast
Cherkasy Oblast
Cherkasy Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine located along the Dnieper River. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Cherkasy).-Geography:...
) in Left-bank Ukraine
Left-bank Ukraine
Left-bank Ukraine is a historic name of the part of Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnieper River, comprising the modern-day oblasts of Chernihiv, Poltava and Sumy as well as the eastern parts of the Kiev and Cherkasy....
. After receiving his high school education at Novhorod-Siverskyi
Novhorod-Siverskyi
Novhorod-Siversky is a historic city in the Chernihiv Oblast of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Novhorod-Siversky Raion, and is situated on the bank of the Desna River, 330 km from the capital, Kiev, and 45 km south of the Russian border. Current estimated population:...
Gymnasium in Ukraine, he studied botany and philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
at Moscow University, graduating with his first degree in 1823, his second in 1827, and his third in 1832; thereafter, he remained at the university in Moscow for further academic work. He taught biology and was director of the botanical garden at the university. 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 the Ukrainian-born writer, Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
, and shared his growing interest in Ukrainian history with them.
In 1834, he was appointed professor of Russian literature at the newly created Saint Vladimir Kiev University
Kiev University
Taras Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv , colloquially known in Ukrainian as KNU is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is the third oldest university in Ukraine after the University of Lviv and Kharkiv University. Currently, its structure...
and also became the university's first rector. (This university had been established by the Russian government to reduce Polish influence in Ukraine and Maksymovych was, in part, an instrument of this policy; the rapid growth of Ukrainian national feeling was its unintended consequence
Unintended consequence
In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the outcomes intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton...
.) Maksymovych elaborated wide-ranging plans for the expansion of the university which eventually included attracting eminent Ukrainians like Gogol, Mykola Kostomarov, and Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
to teach there. After a short time, however, the pressures of the reactionary Imperial government, which feared political conspiracies among the largely Polish student body, and ill health, forced him to retire both from his rectorship and also his professorship. Maksymovych tried to protect the Poles on faculty and the Polish students from political repression but had little success in this and Tsar Nicholas I actually shut down the institution for one whole year. Thereafter, Maksymovych lived quietly at his estate at Mykhailova Hora in central Ukraine and published extensively on Ukrainian folklore, literature, and history; he made several attempts to return to university teaching, but the Imperial Ministry of Education, fearing his Ukrainophile views, prevented this from happening.
In 1847, he was deeply affected by the arrest, imprisonment, and exile of the members of the Ukrainophile and Pan-Slavic Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev, Ukraine, at the time a part of the Russian Empire...
, many of whom, like the poet Taras Shevchenko, were his friends or students. Thereafter, he buried himself in scholarship, publishing extensively.
In 1853, he married, and in 1857, in hope of relieving his severe financial situation, went to Moscow to find work. In 1858, Shevchenko returning from exile, visited him in Moscow, and when Maksymovych returned to Mykhailova Hora, visited him there as well. At this time, Shevchenko painted portraits of both Maksymovych and his wife, Maria.
During his final years, Maksymovych devoted himself more and more to history and engaged in extensive debates with the Russian historian, Mikhail Pogodin
Mikhail Pogodin
Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin was a Russian historian and journalist who, jointly with Nikolay Ustryalov, dominated the national historiography between the death of Nikolay Karamzin in 1826 and the rise of Sergey Solovyov in the 1850s. He is best remembered as a staunch proponent of the Normanist...
and the Ukrainian historian, Mykola Kostomarov.
Despite his isolation in the Ukrainian countryside, Maksymovych participated in the work of many scholarly societies and shortly before his death was elected a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. At the time of his death, the Ukrainian historian, Volodymyr Antonovych
Volodymyr Antonovych
Volodymyr Antonovych , was a prominent Ukrainian historian and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national awakening in the Russian Empire. As a historian, Antonovych, who was longtime Professor of History at the University of Kiev, represented a populist approach to Ukrainian history.This...
, and the Ukrainian literary figure, Oleksander Kotliarevsky, were preparing a great three volume edition of his collected works.
The physical sciences and philosophy
In the 1820s and 1830s, Maksymovych published several textbooks on biology and botany. His first scholarly book on botany was published in 1823 under the title On the System of the Flowering Kingdom. He also published popular works on botany for the layman. This "populistPopulism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
" approach to science, he carried over into his writings on folklore, literature, and history.
In 1833 in Moscow, he published The Book of Naum About God's Great World, which was a popularly written exposition of geology, the solar system, and the universe, in religious garb for the common folk. This book proved to be a best-seller and went through eleven editions, providing Maksymovych with some royalties for many long years.
Also in 1833, Maksymovych published "A Letter on Philosophy" which reflected his admiration for Schelling's "Nature-Philosophy." In this letter, he declared that true philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
was based on love and that all branches of organized, systematic knowledge, which strove to recognise the internal meaning and unity of things, but most especially history, were philosophy. With his emphasis upon history, Maksymovych approached the views of Baader
Baader
Baader is a surname, and may refer to:* Andreas Baader , militant of the Red Army Faction , also known as the Baader Meinhoff Gang.** Baader , film about Andreas Baader...
and Hegel as well as Schelling
Schelling
Notable people with the last name of Schelling include:* Ernest Schelling, American composer* Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, German philosopher* Thomas Schelling, American economist and Nobel laureate...
. When he shortly later moved to Ukraine, he was one of the first to introduce Schelling's ideas to that country.
Folklore
In 1827, Maksymovych published Little Russian Folksongs which was one of the first collections of folk songs published in eastern Europe. It contained 127 songs, including historical songs, songs about every-day life, and ritual songs. The collection marked a new turning to the common people, the folk, which was the hallmark of the new romanticRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
era which was then beginning. This work had an enormous influence upon Maksymovych's contemporaries, both in eastern Ukraine, and also in Austrian Galicia where many Ukrainians lived. Everywhere that it was read, it aroused the interest of the literate classes in the life of the common folk. Thereafter, others too, both in Russia proper and also in Ukraine, began the collection and publication of folksongs. In 1834 and in 1849, Maksymovych published two further collections.
In his collections of folksongs, Maksymovych used a new orthography for the Ukrainian language which was based on etymology. Although this Maksymovychivka looked quite similar to Russian, it was a first step towards an independent orthography, based on phonetics which was eventually proposed by Maksymovych's younger contemporary, Panteleimon Kulish. The latter forms the basis of the modern written Ukrainian language.
In general, Maksymovych claimed to see some basic psychological differences, reflecting differences in national character, between Ukrainian and Russian folk songs; he thought the former more spontaneous and lively, the latter more submissive. Such opinions were shared by many of his contemporaries such as his younger contemporary, the historian Mykola Kostomarov and others.
In 1856, Maksymovych published the first part of his "Days and Months of the Ukrainian Villager" which summed up many years of observation of the Ukrainian peasantry. In it, he laid out the folk customs of the Ukrainian village according to the calendar year. (The full work was only published in Soviet times.)
Language and literature
In 1839, Maksymovych published his History of Old Russian Literature which dealt with the so-called Kievan period of Russian literature, considered by Ukrainians to be the initial stage of Ukrainian literature as well. Maksymovych saw a definite continuity between the language and literature of Kievan Rus'Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
and that of 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...
and modern Ukraine
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...
. Indeed, he seems to have thought that the Old Ukrainian language stood in relation to modern Russian in a way similar to that of Old Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
to modern Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
or modern Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
; that is, that one influenced but was not the same as the other. Later on, he also translated the epic Tale of Igor's Campaign into both modern Russian and modern Ukrainian verse.
Maksymovych's literary works included poetry and almanacs with much material devoted to Ukraine. One of his poems was dedicated to his fellow "Ukrainian national awakener", the poet and painter, Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
, whose premature death made a great impression on him.
History
From the 1850s to the 1870s, Maksymovych worked extensively in history, especially Ukrainian history. He was critical of the Normanist Theory which traced Kievan Rus to Scandinavian origins, preferring to stress its Slavic roots. But he opposed the Russian historian, Mikhail Pogodin, who believed that Kievan Rus originally had been populated by Great Russians from the north. Maksymovych argued that the Kievan lands were never completely de-populated, even after the Mongol invasions, and that they had always been inhabited by Ukrainians and their direct ancestors. As well, he was the first to claim the "Lithuanian period" for Ukrainian history. (His predecessor Dmytro Bantysh-Kaminsky had largely ignored it.) In this way, he anticipated the general scheme of Ukrainian history elaborated by Mykhailo HrushevskyMykhailo 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 the beginning of the twentieth century. Maksymovych also worked on the history of the city of Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, of Cossack Ukraine, of the uprising of 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...
, the Haidamak uprisings against Poland, and other subjects. In general, he sympathized with these various 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...
rebels, so much so, in fact, that his first work on the Haidamaks was banned by the Russian censor. Many of his most important works were critical studies and corrections of the publications of other historians, like the Russian, Mikhail Pogodin
Mikhail Pogodin
Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin was a Russian historian and journalist who, jointly with Nikolay Ustryalov, dominated the national historiography between the death of Nikolay Karamzin in 1826 and the rise of Sergey Solovyov in the 1850s. He is best remembered as a staunch proponent of the Normanist...
, and the Ukrainian Mykola Kostomarov.
Slavistics
With regard to Slavic studies, Maksymovych remarked upon the various theses of the Czech philologist, Josef DobrovskýJosef Dobrovský
Josef Dobrovský was a Bohemian philologist and historian, one of the most important figures of the Czech national revival.- Life & Work :...
and the Slovak scholar, Pavel Jozef Šafárik
Pavel Jozef Šafárik
Pavol Jozef Šafárik Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry / Schaffáry/ Schafary/ Saf(f)arik / Šafarík/ Szafarzik, Czech Pavel Josef Šafařík, German Paul Joseph Schaffarik, Serbian Павле Јосиф Шафарик, Latin Paulus Josephus Schaffarik, Hungarian Pál József Saf(f)arik) Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry /...
. Like them, he divided the Slavic family into two major groups, a western group and an eastern group. But then he sub-divided the western group into two further parts: a north-western group and a south-western group. (Dobrovsky had lumped the Russians together with the South Slavs.) Maksymovych particularly objected to Dobrovsky's contention that the major eastern or Russian group was unified, without major divisions or dialects. This eastern group, Maksymovych divided into two independent languages, South Russian and North Russian. The South Russian language, he divided into two major dialects, Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
and Red Russian/Galician. The North Russian language, he divided into four major dialects of which he thought the Muscovite the most developed, but also the youngest. In addition to this, he also seems to have considered Belarusian to be an independent language, intermediate between North and South Russian, but much closer to the former. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Croatian scholar, V. Jagic, thought Maksymovych's scheme to have been a solid contribution to Slavic philology.
Maksymovych also argued in favour of the independent origin of the spoken Old Rus languages, thinking them separate from the book language of the time which was based on Church Slavonic, and, of course, he traced the antiquity of the differences between Ukrainian and Russian to Kievan Rus.
Maksymovych also made some critical remarks on Pavel Jozef Šafárik
Pavel Jozef Šafárik
Pavol Jozef Šafárik Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry / Schaffáry/ Schafary/ Saf(f)arik / Šafarík/ Szafarzik, Czech Pavel Josef Šafařík, German Paul Joseph Schaffarik, Serbian Павле Јосиф Шафарик, Latin Paulus Josephus Schaffarik, Hungarian Pál József Saf(f)arik) Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry /...
's map of the Slavic world, wrote on the Lusatian Sorbs, and on Polish proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s. Of course, a large part of his historical work dealt with the mutual relations between the Ukrainians and the Russians and the Ukrainians and the Poles.
Maksymovych, as well, wrote a brief autobiography which was first published in 1904. His correspondence was large and significant.
Legacy
Maksymovych was a pioneer of his time and, in many ways, one of the last of the "universal men" who were able to contribute original works to both the sciences and the humanities. His works in biology and the 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 in terms of friendly public "letters" to his scholarly opponents, pointed to new directions in telling the story of the common people. In doing this, however, Maksymovych "awakened" new national sentiments among his fellow Ukrainians, especially the younger generation. He greatly influenced many of his younger contemporaries including the poet Taras ShevchenkoTaras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
, the historian Mykola Kostomarov, the writer Panteleimon Kulish, and many others.
His life was that of a true gatherer of a national heritage, heritage gathering typically being the first stage of the Ukrainian national movement which intermittently but repeatedly gathered strength after his time.
The library of Kiev University is named in his honour.