16 Facts About Ahatanhel Krymsky

Ahatanhel Krymsky was one of the founders of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1918 and a full member of it and the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1903.

Ahatanhel Krymsky was convicted in "Anti-Soviet nationalistic activities" and imprisoned in Kustanay General Prison No 7.

Ahatanhel Krymsky was born in Volodymyr-Volynskyi to a Tatar father with Belarusian descent and an ethnic Polish mother.

In 1915 in interview to the Terciman newspaper, Ahatanhel Krymsky identified himself as a Crimean Tatar.

Ahatanhel Krymsky's surname "Krymsky" means "Crimean," and was received by an ancestor in the 17th century who was a Crimean Tatar mullah from Bakhchysarai.

Ahatanhel Krymsky's family moved soon to Zvenyhorodka in Central Ukraine.

Ahatanhel Krymsky graduated from Galagan College in Kyiv in 1889, from the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow in 1891, and subsequently from Moscow University in 1896.

In July 1918, Ahatanhel Krymsky returned to Kyiv and took part in the foundation of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and its library and served as the first VUAN permanent secretary and de facto director until the Soviet government brought about his defeat in the VUAN elections of 1929.

Ahatanhel Krymsky was an expert in up to 34 languages; some sources report that he had at least an average knowledge of 56 languages.

Ahatanhel Krymsky contributed few hundred entries to the Brockhaus, Efron, and Granat Russian encyclopedias and wrote many other works on Arabic, Turkish, Turkic, Crimean Tatar, and Iranian history and literature, some of which were pioneering textbooks in Russian Oriental studies.

Ahatanhel Krymsky researched Ukrainian dialects and was actively involved in the work of standardizing the vocabulary and orthography of literary Ukrainian in the 1920s.

Ahatanhel Krymsky was the editor of the first two vols of the four-volume Russian-Ukrainian dictionary and of the Russian-Ukrainian dictionary of legal language.

Ahatanhel Krymsky translated the poetry of European writers such as Heinrich Heine, Byron, Sappho, Friedrich Ruckert.

Ahatanhel Krymsky published articles and reviews on Ukrainian writers, their works and on Ukrainian theater.

Since 1930, the works of Ahatanhel Krymsky were banned and he was forbidden to publish his works.

Ahatanhel Krymsky's case was finally discontinued in 1957 and he was officially rehabilitated in 1960.