Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov

Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov was born in Urasovka village in 1817 . He is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St. Petersburg University, an author of many books, including his famous biography of the seventeenth century Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Bohdan Khmelnitsky, and his fundamental Russian History in Biographies of its main figures.

As a historian, Kostomarov's writings reflected the romantic trends of his time. He was an advocate of the use of ethnography and folksong by historians. On the basis of their folksongs and history, In his famous essay "Two Russian Nationalities", a landmark in the history of Ukrainian national thought, he propagated what some consider to be the stereotypes of Russians inclined towards autocracy, collectivism, and state-building, and Ukrainians inclined towards liberty, poetry, and individualism.

Kostomarov was also a romantic author and poet, a member of the Kharkiv Romantic School. He published two poetry collections, Ukrainian Ballads(1839) and The Branch (1840), both collections containing historical poems mostly about Kievan Rus and Bohdan Khmelnitsky. His poetry is known for including vocabulary and other elements of traditional Ukrainian folk songs.

He also wrote historical dramas, however these had little influence on the development of Ukrainian theater. He also wrote prose in Russian, the novelette Kudeyar, 1875, and Russian mixed with Ukrainian Chernigovka, 1881, but these also are considered insignificant. Another short story Animal Riot, (1879-80), published in 1917 takes Russia as its analogue, and imagines a revolution of farm animals. The work has been cited as a possible antecedent to George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Also he based Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius which was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev, Ukraine, at the time a part of the Russian Empire. Founded in December, 1845 or in January the society sought to revive the ideals of the traditional Ukrainian brotherhoods. It was quickly suppressed by the government in March 1847 with most of the members punished by exile or imprisonment. Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov died in Saint Petersburg in 1885 as famous Ukrainian poet and politician.