Komarov, Mykhailo

Komarov, Mykhailo, b 23 January 1844 in Dmytrivka, Pavlohrad county, Katerynoslav gubernia, d 19 August 1913 in Odesa. (Photo: Mykhailo Komarov.) Bibliographer, ethnographer, critic, and historian. He studied at Kharkiv University. A public notary, he lived in Kyiv, Uman, and (from 1880) Odesa where he was a central figure in community life. He used his legal training to fight tsarist censorship. He wrote valuable bibliographic guides, including bibliographies of Ukrainian literature (1798–1883) in thealmanac Rada (1883); of Ukrainian drama and theater from 1815 (1906, revised 1912); and of such figures as Ivan Kotliarevsky (1904), Taras Shevchenko (1903), Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, Mykola Lysenko (1904), and Stepan Rudansky (1895). He also compiled Nova zbirka malorus’kykh prykazok, prysliv'ïv, pomovok, zahadok izamovlian’ (A New Collection of Little-Russian Proverbs, Maxims, Sayings, Riddles, and Incantations, 1890) and Russko-ukrainskii slovar’ (Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary, 4 vols), which was published in Lviv in 1893–8 under the pseudonym M. Umanets; contributed literary criticism to Zoria (Lviv) and Dilo; wrote historical studies on Antin Holovaty (1891), Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1901), Zaporozhian liberties (1907), and censorship in Ukraine; and published popular literature.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]