"We know about him mainly thanks to Taras Shevchenko"
Ukrainian historian, Harvard professor Serhii Plokhiy considers Mykola Kostomarov the most underestimated figure in the history of Ukraine .
Plokhiy reminded that Mykola Kostomarov is the intellectual author of the first Ukrainian modern national project ("The Book of the Being of the Ukrainian People", fragments were first published in the journal "Voice of the Past" in 1918).
The scientist noted that Ukrainians know about Kostomarov mainly thanks to Taras Shevchenko. "Shevchenko was a very talented interpreter and relayer of the ideas of Kostomarov and the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. It seems to me that Kostomarov is one of the most underestimated figures in Ukrainian history," Plokhiy said.
Mykola Kostomarov is an outstanding Ukrainian historian , ethnographer, novelist, romantic poet, thinker, public figure and ethnopsychologist. He was born in 1817 in the village of Yurasivka, on the territory of the modern Voronezh region of Russia. Once upon a time there was the Ostrogoz Cossack Slobid regiment here, but after the abolition of the Cossack system in the Slobozhan region, these lands went to the Voronezh province, and thus became Russia.
Kostomarov was a co-founder and an active member of the Slavophile-Ukrainian Kyiv association "Kyril-Methodiivske Bratstvo", he wrote its program work - "The Book of the Being of the Ukrainian People". In 1847, for his participation in the Ukrainophile brotherhood, Kostomarov was arrested and transported from Kyiv to St. Petersburg, where he spent the rest of his life.
