Turning the pages back... May 30, 1872 (05/30/99)

Turning the pages back...

May 30, 1872

Konstantyna Malytska, born on May 30, 1872, in Kropyvnyk, Kalush county in Halychyna, was among the leading Ukrainian women activists of the turn of the century.

Malytska was accepted at the State Teachers' Seminary in Lviv on a scholarship from the Ruthenian Women's Society, and during the course of her studies began writing stories and verse for children, which were published under the pseudonym "Ratyk" in the magazine Dzvinok.

After graduating in 1892, she taught elementary school in Halych and became active in the local Prosvita, spearheaded literacy drives, maintained close contact with Lviv-based women's organizations such as the Ukrainian Girls' Circle (Ukrainian Women's Circle, UWC from 1905), and contributed to the Ukrainian press on pedagogical and patriotic themes. Her first collection of children's stories, "Mali Druzi" (Little Friends), appeared in 1899.

Next she took a teaching position in Luzhany, near the regional capital of Chernivtsi, where she met the writer Olha Kobylianska. In 1906 Malytska was invited back to Lviv by the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society to teach at the Shevchenko Girls' School. She assumed the editorship of Dzvinok and involved herself in such organizations as Sich, Sokil, the Ruthenian Women's Club (RWC) and the UWC. In 1908 she was instrumental in the formation of the Ukrainian Women's Hromada (UWH), in which the RWC and UWC were merged, showing her inclination towards centralization of the women's movement.

In December 1912 she joined Olena Stepaniv and other activists in preparing Ukrainian women for an imminent conflict, and in February 1913 she joined seven major activist signatories in a proclamation urging the Ukrainian community to support the Fund for Ukraine's Needs, which eventually served as a financial underpinning for the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen.

In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, she was active in supporting the Supreme Ukrainian Council and its vocal anti-Russian campaign. Moscow's forces occupied Lviv in September 1914, and in February 1915 she was arrested and deported to the Angara and Yeniseisk. Malytska met up with Ukrainian intellectuals caught up in the sweep and continued her pedagogical work there among Ukrainian and Kyrgyz children.

She returned to Lviv in September 1920, plunging into organizing women's activism. The UWH had been reorganized as the Union of Ukrainian Women (UUW) and she joined its work energetically. She presided over the Women's Congress of December 1921, served as UUW president in 1923-1924 and was a member of the executive in 1924-1928.

In 1930 Malytska joined the editorial board of the magazine Nova Khata, and in the 1930s concentrated on teaching and pedagogical writing as the Polish Pacification campaign forced most organized Ukrainian activity underground. In 1937 she retired from teaching. In 1941 she founded the Women's Service to Ukraine relief organization. As the war drew to a close, she decided to remain in Lviv and worked at the Lviv Scientific Library of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences, compiling bibliographies of children's literature.

Konstantyna Malytska died in Lviv on March 17, 1947.

Sources: "Malytska, Konstantyna," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Martha Bohachevska Chomiak, "Feminists Despite Themselves" (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1988); ed. Lidia Burachynska et al, "Vykhovnytsia Pokolin: Konstantyna Malytska" (Toronto: World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations: 1965).

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