Antonovich, V. B.

Coincidentally, the small town in which Antonovich was born, Makhnovka, had been the property of the Tyshkevich family (of Vilna archeological fame) in the 15th century. His parentage was unconventional: though he was registered as nobility, when in fact, he was the bastard son of a Hungarian emigrant revolutionary, but carried his mother’s married name; she had been the governess in the home of a wealthy Polish shlakht (nobleman), and married the male teacher, Bontifatie Antonovich. A Catholic who converted to Orthodoxy, he is considered today a founder of Ukrainian independence, but he’s more complicated than that because he appears to have supported Little Russia as a unique culture within the larger complex of the empire. His personal life was as nearly complicated as his mother’s; married, he nonetheless carried on an affair with a student, Katerina Melnik, from the 1880s until they married in 1902.