Pavlik, Mikhail

Born Sept. 17, 1853, in the village of Monastyrsk, near the town of Kosov, now in Ivano-Frankovsk Oblast; died Jan. 26, 1915, in L’vov. Ukrainian writer and public figure of revolutionary and democratic views.

Pavlik studied at the University of L’vov and began publishing in 1874. In 1878 he published the journal Drug obshchestva (The Friend of Society) with I. Ia. Franko. Threatened with arrest, he lived in hiding in Geneva from 1879 to 1881. In his journalistic articles, Pavlik attacked the Austro-Hungarian Empire and appealed for revolutionary action. He maintained ties with the Russian Narodniki (Populists) and with the Liberation of Labor group, and was an ardent proponent of friendship between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples.

Pavlik exposed the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality in the short stories “Iurko Kulivov” and “Tat’iana Rebenshchuk” and in the novella A Fallen Man (1878). In his literary criticism he advocated realism. Pavlik was influenced by Marxist ideas.