Isydora Kosach-Borysova

She was respected not only for being a part of a noble and honored family in Ukraine but also for a bright and talented personality… At the end of her life, the cheerful, always optimistic Isydora admitted that she had an interesting, colorful life, full of encounters with unique individuals and, despite some blows of fate, a happy one.

Tamara Skrypka, literary historian

Isydora Kosach-Borysova was a Ukrainian memoirist, teacher, translator, cultural activist, and agronomist. She was a corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences (UVAN) and an honorary member of the Ukrainian Women’s Association of America—daughter of Olena Pchilka and younger sister of Lesia Ukrainka.

Isydora was born on March 21, 1888, in Kolodyazhne in Volyn, the youngest, sixth child in the family of Petro and Olha Kosach. She got her primary education at home under the supervision of her older brothers and sisters, graduated from a gymnasium in Kyiv, Higher Women’s Agricultural Courses in St. Petersburg, and the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (one of the first students of the Agricultural Faculty), where she became an agronomist, and in 1911 began her professional career in Chisinau.

In 1912, she married agronomist Yurii Borysov and two years later gave birth to a daughter, Olha. She taught in Kamianets-Podilsky, and from 1925, after settling in Kyiv, Isydora taught at the agricultural institutes of Kyiv and Bila Tserkva and translated from French. She is the author of works on plant physiology.

In the late 1920s, the authorities began to attack her and her family. First, in 1930, her husband was sent to Stalin’s camps on a trumped-up case, where he died. In 1937, Isydora was exiled to the Arkhangelsk region because of slander. She returned to Kyiv in 1940 thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the approaching 70th anniversary of Lesia Ukrainka’s birth. She and her sister Olha were involved in the preparation of the celebrations.

Although she did not belong to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Isydora was elected to the Ukrainian National Council during the German occupation of Kyiv. Because of this, she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942. Soon, she was lucky enough to be released from prison.

In the fall of 1943, together with her daughter and grandchildren Mykhailo and Olha, Isydora left Ukraine. “I only want all my close, dear people, to survive, to live together and not to be bothered by anyone,” she wrote about that decision. Her sister Olha also left Ukraine separately. After staying in the DP camp in Germany, the family arrived in the United States in December 1949 and settled in New Market, New Jersey. In the beginning, Isydora worked as a dishwasher like most postwar immigrants. Later, she worked with women’s civic organizations, including the Ukrainian Women’s Association of America. She chaired the Committee at the Ukrainian World Congress in the United States to publish Olha Kosach-Kryvyniuk’s “Lesia Ukrainka. Chronology of Life and Work” (1970) and was honorary chair of the World Committee for the Commemoration of Lesia Ukrainka. 

She wrote memoirs about Olena Pchilka, Lesia Ukrainka, Mykola Lysenko, her native Kolodyazhne, and Zelenyi Hai, adding interesting details to the biographies of her famous relatives, and published memoirs of her time in hard labor in the magazine “Nashe Zhyttia” (Our Life).

Isydora Kosach died at 93 on April 12, 1980, in Piscataway, New Jersey. She was buried at St. Andrew Ukrainian Cemetery in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.