Boris Dmitrievich Grinchenko

Born Nov. 27 (Dec. 9), 1863, in Vil’khovii Iar on the Khar’kovshchina; died Apr. 23 (May 6), 1910, in Ospedaletti, Italy. Ukrainian author, critic, historian, ethnologist, and publicist.

Born into the family of a landowner, Grinchenko was a teacher from 1881. A number of his stories and novellas describe the difficult life of the peasants: Alone, Completely Alone (1885), Without Bread (1884), and Under Silent Willows (1901). Other works are devoted to the class struggle in the village (The Peasant House, 1886) and the unbearable working conditions in the mines (Among Other People, 1889, and Pan’ko, 1893). The image of the idealized liberal enlightener is characteristic of several of his dramas (Social Work, 1898–99 and On a New Path, 1905), novellas (The Sunray, 1890, and At the Crossroads, 1891), and stories. Grinchenko was the author of valuable ethnologic research studies. He also wrote collections of poems: The Songs of Vasilia Chaichenok (1884), Under a Straw Roof (1886), New Songs and Ballads (1887), Under a Cloudy Sky (1893), Songs and Ballads (1895), and Minutes (1903). Grinchenko’s Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (vols. 1–4, 1907–09) won a prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1906.