Mykyta Shapoval

Coming out, in his words, “from the slums of the Ukrainian village,” from a large family of laborers, during his 50 years of age, M. Shapoval was able to rise to the level of a thinker whose achievements and works should rightfully be the pride of our people and enrich civilization as a whole.

Oleksandr Yurenko, historian and sociologist

Mykyta Shapoval was a Ukrainian public and political figure, founder of national sociology, publicist, forester, and poet. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921 and the Ukrainian community in Czechoslovakia. He was the creator and head of the Ukrainian Civic Committee in Prague, the Ukrainian Institute of Sociology, and several Ukrainian educational, scientific, and public institutions in Czechoslovakia.

Mykyta Shapoval was born on May 26 (June 8), 1882, in Sriblianka near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. He studied at the forestry school in Novohlukhivka (1900), the junior infantry school in Chuhuiv (1906) in the Kharkiv region, Kharkiv University, and the Kyiv Commercial Institute (1917).

From the beginning of the twentieth century, he actively participated in the Ukrainian national movement. M. Shapoval was a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP, 1901) and one of the organizers and leaders of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries (UPSR). Together with Pavlo Bohatsky, he founded the literary, public, and scientific journal “Ukrainska Khata” (Ukrainian House, Kyiv, 1909-1914), and his  articles of that time formed the  trend in Ukrainian socio-political, literary, and artistic thought that defended the national identity of Ukrainian culture and the need for political struggle.

At the same time, Mykyta Shapoval proved himself to be an outstanding forestry scientist, organizer of forestry, author of the first Ukrainian manuals on forestry, and head of the All-Ukrainian Forestry Union (1917).

In 1917, Mykyta Shapoval was a member of the Central Rada,  the first editor of the newspaper “News from the Ukrainian Central Rada,” and co-author of the Universal (state-political act of the Central Rada). In December 1917-January 1918, he served as Secretary General and then Postal and Telegraph Minister in the Vynnychenko government. Member of the All-Russian and Ukrainian Constituent Assemblies. Co-founder of the Ukrainian National Union, which led the uprising against Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky (1918). Under the Directory, he was Minister of Lands (December 1918-February 1919).

From October 1919 until his last days, Mykyta Shapoval lived in Czechoslovakia, where he headed the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries. With the support of President Tomáš Masaryk, Mykyta, together with Nykyfor Hryhoriv, founded the Ukrainian Civic Committee in Prague (1921-1925) and launched unprecedented charitable, cultural, educational, scientific, social and political activities for Ukrainian exiles and the liberation of Ukraine by their forces. M. Shapoval is the organizer of several Ukrainian institutions in the Czech Republic: The Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Poděbrady, the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, the Ukrainian Institute of Sociology in Prague, and the Ukrainian Workers’ University, of which he was the director, as well as some other institutions and organizations.

In Prague, he realized his talent as a sociologist, leaving a large scientific heritage (“General Sociology,” “Social Structure,” etc.) and as a publisher and editor, in particular of the journal “Nova Ukraina” (New Ukraine). According to Oleksandr Yurenko, one of the first biographers of M. Shapoval in independent Ukraine, he published 36 books, three collections of poetry, and 340 articles during his 50-year lifetime. Despite their relevance, these works remain underappreciated to this day.

Mykyta Shapoval died on February 25, 1932, in Rzhevnyca near Prague.