Another of the founding members of the IMAO, Gattsuk, who identified as Little Russian rather than Ukrainian, taught at the Richelieu Lyceum, and then developed his interest in archeology. He demonstrated particular interest in distinguishing racial/ethnic parameters of theremains in the kurgans he excavated. A contentious amateur, he enjoyed participating in the debates that arose at the congresses, even when he was not well versed in the scientific details.
Congress Attended: 7th
Barshchevskii was a self-taught pioneer in photography, and developed the art of taking photos of archeologically significant architecture. At her invitation, he added photography to Princess Maria Tenisheva’s art studio at her renowned Talashkino estate. Many of his pictures are all that remains today of some of what the Soviets destroyed.
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.