Катерина Грушевська

Activity: Culture, Science and education
Date of birth: June 21, 1900
Date of death: March 30, 1943
Navigator: World wars

Ethnosociologist, folklorist, ethnographer, culturologist, translator from European languages, member of the Kyiv “Prosvita” society.

She had everything to make a significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian science: thorough knowledge and the ability to learn, a sharp critical mind, and the courage to take on new, practically unexplored topics. By the age of thirty, Kateryna Hrushevska had established herself as a talented researcher of the Ukrainian past, a collector of folklore, an editor and compiler of scientific publications and journals, and, effectively, the right hand in arranging the scientific studies of her father, the historian and head of the Ukrainian Central Rada, Mykhailo Hrushevsky.
Her two-volume work “Ukrainian Folk Dumas” still remains one of the most authoritative scientific studies in this field. It was planned for six volumes—the last was to be dedicated to such an interesting phenomenon as pseudo-dumas or later stylizations of the folk epic. These plans were crossed out on the night of July 10 to 11, 1938, when Hrushevska was taken forever from her father’s house at 9 Pankivska Street, accused of being “a participant in an anti-Soviet nationalist insurgent organization that was preparing an armed uprising, the overthrow of Soviet power, and the creation of an ‘Independent bourgeois nationalist state.’”
Little Profesorivna
That was what Kateryna Hrushevska was called since childhood. And no wonder: the only daughter of history professor Mykhailo Hrushevsky and a teacher, an active figure in the women’s movement in Galicia, Mariya Voyakovska—she was surrounded by the Ukrainian highly intellectual public from childhood. In Lviv, Solomiya Krushelnytska and Natalya Kobrynska often visited them; in Kyiv, the Hrushevskys were friends with the Lysenkos, Cherniakhivskys, Steshenkos, Starytskys, Kosaches; in Kryvorivnia, where they regularly spent their summer vacations, Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, and Fedir Vovk visited them. Her childhood portraits were painted by Ivan Trush and Mykhailo Zhuk, and Mykhailo Boichuk gave little Katrusia a few painting lessons.
Also, for her parents, she was Kuliunia, a joy, the dearest one all her life. Katrusia was born on June 21, 1900, in Lviv, where at that time Professor Hrushevsky headed the first chair of Ukrainian history at Lviv University. From an early age, Katrusia was sickly (she was found to have lung problems and a risk of developing tuberculosis), so already at one year old, her parents decided on a trip to Crimea (another such trip with a visit to Kyiv would happen in 1905). In her childhood, Katrusia and her parents also visited Venice, Rome, Naples, Florence, and climbed to the top of Vesuvius.
Due to her sickliness, Katrusia received a home education. However, she had someone to learn from, because her mother, Mariya Sylvestrivna, had a pedagogical education at that time, knew Polish, French, English, and Norwegian, was an active participant in the feminist movement in Galicia, and was the founder of the “Ruska Okhoronka” (later “Ukrainska Zakhoronka”) society, which cared for both children, opening kindergartens, and their mothers, opening new perspectives before them.
Katrusia learned easily. Already at four years old, she read the words “Rusyn” (as Ukrainians called themselves in Galicia at the time) and “more” (sea), laid out by her father from blocks. Later, she began to master French under the guidance of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s daughter, Ariadna, who studied at the Sorbonne and had flawless pronunciation. Her mother taught her Polish, English, and Norwegian (later, at the request of Mariya Zankovetska, Kateryna Hrushevska would translate Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” from Norwegian).
Kateryna Hrushevska with her family. Oleksandr Hrushevsky, Hanna Shamraiieva, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Mariya Hrushevska, Serhiy and Olha Shamraiiev, Kateryna Hrushevska, Hlafira Hrushevska. Kyiv, 1906
Also, Kuliunia loved books and often consulted with her father in letters about what she could read and what was still too early. Her father suggested scientific explorations, preparing the ground for further scientific research. Therefore, at the age of 14, when Katrusia finally prepared to enter the gymnasium, she had thorough knowledge in many areas.
But the First World War began. Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who remained a subject of the Russian Empire, could no longer stay on the lands of Austria-Hungary. So the family, with difficulties through Vienna and Italy, returned to Kyiv, where Mykhailo Serhiyovych was already awaited by accusations of separatism and revolutionary activity, arrest, and exile first to Simbirsk, then to Kazan and to Moscow, with a ban on engaging in scientific work. Mariya Sylvestrivna and Katrusia followed him, but after suffering from malaria in 1916, they eventually returned to Kyiv.
Detroit or Ukraine?
Kateryna Hrushevska’s first opportunity for formal education appeared in 1917, when she enrolled in the Faculty of Law and Natural Sciences of the Ukrainian People’s (later Ukrainian State) University. Parallel to her studies, she also took up scientific work: she signed her first article, published in 1918 in the “Literary-Scientific Herald,” with the pseudonym “Profesorivna.”
However, the studies did not last long—the Bolshevik aggression and subsequent developments in Ukraine forced the Hrushevskys to emigrate. Abroad, Kateryna became an auditor at the University of Geneva for a while, studying Roman law. But material hardship did not allow the Hrushevskys to stay long in one place: from 1919 to 1924, they traveled all over Europe: Prague, Geneva, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Baden.
It was in emigration that Kateryna defined the sphere of her scientific interests: sociology and primitive cultures, delving into the mythological layer from which the collective consciousness of an entire nation is formed. Perhaps this choice was influenced by her childhood memories of vacationing in Kryvorivnia, where folklore was an organic part of the life of ordinary Hutsuls. In Vienna, she helped her father in creating the Ukrainian Sociological Institute, worked there as a secretary and postgraduate student, and created a studio of primitive culture at the Institute…
Kateryna Hrushevska’s first serious scientific work, published in 1923, was titled “Primitive Tales, Fairy Tales, and Fables of Africa and America.” Why not Ukrainian? Because abroad at that time it was practically impossible to find enough Ukrainian folklore material for research in libraries and scientific publications, while the folk creativity of the peoples of America and Africa attracted the attention of colonial researchers.
After this work, Kateryna could have been invited to the USA. Mykhailo Hrushevsky approached Vasyl Kuziv, a pastor from Detroit, with a request to find a job for his daughter in educational organizations in the USA. But, having received a quick agreement, he never dared to let his daughter go—at that time, in his own words, she was already “the first assistant in all my affairs.”
Therefore, instead of Detroit, the Hrushevskys accepted the invitation of the Soviet government, which promised them not to recall “past sins,” to return to Kyiv. On the one hand, they were misled, along with others, by the enthusiasm and prospects of Ukrainization, which spread from the early 1920s. On the other hand, as Kateryna Hrushevska said, “we have no other Ukraine.”
To know the essence of the folk soul
Mykhailo Hrushevsky returned to Kyiv in 1924. He was elected an academician of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and head of the Historical-Philological Department. He taught history at Kyiv State University and headed the Archeographic Commission of VUAN, the purpose of whose existence was to create a scientific description of publications printed on the territory of ethnographic Ukraine in the 16th–18th centuries.
At this time, Kateryna worked as a research fellow of the Cultural-Historical Commission and the Commission of Historical Song of the Research Chair of the Historical-Philological Department of VUAN, headed the Cabinet of Primitive Culture, and became the permanent editor of the journal “Primitive Society and its Remnants in Ukraine.”
She participated in ethnographic expeditions to record folk interpretations of dreams, which were conducted in cooperation with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (some of her records were later sent to London and used by the well-known British researcher Charles Seligman), and developed the “Program for Collecting Materials for the Ukrainian Folk Dream Book.”
Kateryna also published studies: “The Human Collective as the Foundation of Memory,” “Around the Savage’s Soul,” “On the Sociology of Blind Bards (Startsi),” “On the Side Paths of the Kobzar Epic,” “On the Naked Body as a Magical Means,” “On the Division of Economy Between Man and Woman.” “I often think these days, how I racked my brain in Baden and then, having arrived in Kyiv—how to ease your scientific path and secure a possible position, and how you made all my worries and plans redundant and unnecessary, having brilliantly declared yourself in these years both along the research and organizational lines,” wrote an admired Hrushevsky, congratulating his daughter on her 26th birthday.
But the main scientific work of Kateryna Hrushevska became the “Ukrainian Folk Dumas,” where for the first time this genre of the Ukrainian folk epic was systematized by plots and deeply analyzed. Unfortunately, of the six planned volumes, only two saw the light of day (and practically the entire print run of the second volume was destroyed). The first volume collected 13 texts and 117 variants of dumas, the second—20 dumas and 176 variants. To this day, this is the most complete, most thorough among all editions of the Ukrainian epic, with which, in the words of Filaret Kolessa, “no subsequent edition could compare.” Later, it was these studies, as “compositions of a vividly nationalist character,” that would form the basis of her case, inspired by the NKVD.
“They took her in a summer dress, even without a coat!”
In the 1930s, the Soviet Union’s policy towards Ukraine changed drastically. Ukrainization was replaced by reaction, total purges and the liquidation of Ukrainian studies institutions of VUAN began, publications were destroyed, and journals were closed. An onslaught on the Ukrainian intelligentsia, denunciations, accusations, and arrests spread.
In 1931, Mykhailo Hrushevsky was arrested, and Kateryna followed. But the scientist’s authority was so great that they did not dare to put him in a camp or shoot him, replacing it with an “honorable exile” to Moscow. Kateryna followed her father, for without her at that time, Hrushevsky, whose eyesight began to decline sharply, simply could not manage: she was his advisor, secretary, and caregiver.
However, even Kateryna’s care did not save the 68-year-old academician from death: at the end of 1934, while staying in Kislovodsk at a sanatorium, a carbuncle appeared on his back, and three days after four unsuccessful operations, he died of general blood poisoning. Putting aside all her affairs and scientific research, Kateryna took up the compilation of the 10th volume of the “History of Ukraine-Rus” and the 6th volume of the “History of Ukrainian Literature,” prepared by Mykhailo Hrushevsky during his “Moscow exile.”
The Hrushevsky house on Pankivska Street
But her time was also coming to an end. On the night of July 10 to 11, 1938, she was taken from her father’s house on Pankivska Street based on a denunciation by an NKVD agent, a former lecturer at the Nizhyn Institute of Public Education and later Kyiv University, Kost Shtepa, and she would never return home. “They took her in a summer dress, even without a coat! I haven’t seen Katrusia since the day of her arrest. How will I live without her for so many years… and I parted with her only once in my whole life, and even then for just one month…” Mariya Sylvestrivna lamented later.
She would be accused of the “sins” standard for that time: counter-revolutionary activity, involvement in a nationalist organization, and espionage. “She was a participant in an anti-Soviet nationalist insurgent organization that was preparing an armed uprising, the overthrow of Soviet power, and the creation of an ‘Independent bourgeois nationalist state.’ On the orders of this organization, she was connected with Ukrainian foreign anti-Soviet formations,” would be written in her sentence. This sentence—eight years in camps—considering Kateryna’s state of health, could be considered fatal.
Mariya Sylvestrivna hoped to see her daughter alive until the very end, wrote to her in the camps, and sent her favorite stockings and coffee, among other things. However, the letters returned with the invariable mark “addressee left.” Her mother wrote to all instances, seeking a review of the case. A friend of the Hrushevskys, Academician Kyrylo Studynsky from Lviv, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, joined in this (the very one whom the NKVD in June 1941 would send from Lviv to Kyiv along with Petro Franko, and then write in a telegram addressed to the People’s Commissar of State Security of the USSR Merkulov “it is advisable to shoot them”).
Today it is known for certain that Kateryna Hrushevska’s case was indeed reviewed. In July 1940, she was brought via Vladivostok to Moscow, and from there to Kyiv. For three months, from December 1940 to March 1941, she was in the same city as her mother. Of course, no one informed her mother about this.
Exhibition dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of Kateryna Hrushevska
The subsequent fate of Kateryna Hrushevska is unknown. According to KGB documents, she died on March 30, 1943, in Temlag and was buried in Novosibirsk. And in reality? Her grave was lost among thousands of other nameless graves of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, mowed down by the Soviet repressive machine. For being highly educated and knowing many languages. For dreaming of their own path of development for a modern Ukraine. For being bright, extraordinary, and noticeable. For being Ukrainians.
Today we are reclaiming the memory of these names. And once again we wonder: what would Ukrainian culture, science, poetry, theater, cinematography be like if all of them could live and create to the fullest, if the connection between generations had not been artificially severed?

Source: Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. “Daughter, student, companion: for the birthday of Kateryna Hrushevska.”