Mykola Oleksiyovych Bohuslavskyi (year and place of birth unknown - died in 1933 in Krasnodar, Russian Federation) was a member of the council of the first Yekaterinoslav "Enlightenment", elected at a meeting on 4 June 1906, initiator of the publication of the educational magazine "Dniprovi Wavy", publisher of this magazine in 1913, "bandura father", as defined by many contemporaries. Organiser and inspirer of the kobza revival in the Kuban, public figure, publisher, philanthropist; organiser of the First (1913) and Second (1916) kobza schools in the Kuban.
A member of the council of the Ekaterinoslav Prosvita (1906). He initiated the creation of the Ukrainian illustrated weekly "Dniprovi Wavy" (1910-1913), whose actual editor was the famous Ukrainian historian Dmytro Doroshenko.
According to reference books of the 1900s and 1910s, Bohuslavsky worked as a modest clerk in the office of the Catherine Railway. Professor Vasyl Bidnov called Bohuslavsky "an ideal distributor of Ukrainian books". Another contemporary, Dmytro Lysychenko, wrote:
"At the same time and later, M. Bohuslavsky was distributing Ukrainian books in the Katerynoslav region, collecting membership fees and distributing the publications of the 'Benevolent Society'.
For those times, he was quite successful in distributing books.
The 1904 report of the "Benevolent Society" indicates that he sold publications of the society for 66 krb. 06 kopecks, and in 1906 - for 29 krb. 40 kopecks."
In the memoirs of Oleksandr Lototskyi, Bohuslavskyi is called the most active distributor of Ukrainian books in the Katerynoslav region, along with Fedir Yefremov.
Writing about the attempts to publish postcards in one colour in Katerynoslav, D. Lysychenko mentions such attempts made by Bohuslavskyi. He published several cards with drawings by the Katerynoslav artist Vasyl Korniienko (1867-1904), including "Character" and others. Dmytro Doroshenko, who arrived in Katerynoslav in 1909, recalled:
"The idea of publishing a magazine devoted specifically to local life arose among the people of Katerynoslav. The initiator of this idea was the old Mykola Bohuslavskyi, who was, among other things, an incomparable agitator among young people, able to attract them to national work, to distribute Ukrainian books, and to establish circles of amateur bandura players. Later, he moved to the Kuban and continued his modest but useful work for the national cause there. He persuaded me to take up editing the magazine, found a publisher responsible to the administration in the person of a local grandfather and landlord, Kuzma Kotov, and came up with the name for the magazine: "Dnipro Waves," said Doroshenko.
The popularity of Bohuslavskyi can be evidenced by the fact that his contemporaries dedicated their poems to him, and some of them created his image in fiction. In 1912, a novel by a local 23-year-old educator, Tikhon Mytrus, entitled "In the Morning (The Story of a Rural Educational Society)" was published in Katerynoslav. In this work, Bohuslavsky appears under the transparent name of his grandfather Bohush. In the story, the young educators Mykhailo and Makar discuss the idea of Ukrainians starting their own magazine in the town, and they are confident that everything will be fine: "It's grandfather Bohush's idea, it's his initiative, and many of our Ukrainians take his advice..." Bohush's grandfather holds a meeting of the editorial committee, which decides to publish the magazine:
"Grandfather Bohush, a man in his seventies, with a large bald spot, smoothly shaved, with a grey, very long moustache, like that of the Cossacks, invited us to drink a glass of tea. Over tea, we began to discuss the matter of the magazine. (Makar suggests calling the magazine "Velykyi Luh" - M. Ch.) - Just make sure, guys, that there is a kayak on the wrapper, and that Marko Markovych stands on the stubble (a member of the editorial board, perhaps a reference to M. Nechyporenko. Nechyporenko - M. Ch.) with a huge Zaporizhzhia herring, wearing wide trousers and an embroidered shirt, put all the employees of the Velykyi Luh on the oars, and I will cook porridge in my old age among the kayuk," said grandfather Bohush with his usual humour.
And the Kuban poet Yakiv Zharko (1861-1933) published his poem "Waves" in the Katerynoslav journal "Dniprovi wavy" (1912, № 11-12). In it, he advocated the merger of the Dnipro and Kuban waves, which in fact were two branches of the Ukrainian people, the descendants of the Cossacks.
Given that Bohuslavsky was the initiator of the publication of the Dnipro Waves magazine, and that in his life the Dnipro and the Kuban merged together (he lived in Yekaterinoslav and Yekaterinodar), it is no coincidence that the poem is dedicated to him, albeit with a slightly encrypted dedication: "I dedicate M. O. to the Lord".
Moving to the Kuban
After moving to the Kuban (1912), Bohuslavsky became an ardent promoter of the bandura, which made it ring in this region. The Cossacks called him the "bandura father", and he was so successful in reviving kobzarism that even during the tsarist era, there were bandura players in almost every village. Among the people who owed their creative growth and the awakening of national consciousness to the "bandura father" were the later famous kobza players Vasyl Yemets (1890-1982), Mykhailo Teliha (1900-1942), and others. Both of these kobzars left fond memories of Bohuslavsky.
In the 1920s, when Mykhailo Teliha was a student at the Ukrainian Economic Academy in Podebrady (Czech Republic), he wrote a student work entitled "How I Became a Conscious Ukrainian".
In it, he says that he was introduced to his "grandfather" Bohuslavsky in Yekaterinodar by one of his fellow students, Martovyi. Bohuslavsky not only taught the young man to play the bandura, but also gave him Ukrainian books to read and talked about Ukrainian history.
"He began to talk about how," M. Teliha recalled, "we, the Cossacks, the descendants of the knights who defended the Ukrainian people for centuries, have been reduced to nothing, we don't even know how to speak our own language, and we have already forgotten 'who we are, whose parents we are,' so there is no need to talk about it. I felt that he was shaming our Cossacks for something, but I didn't understand why he started such a conversation out of the blue. Then he took a big book and started reading from the first page.
It was Arkas's history of Ukraine, and he read out a wonderful introduction to it. That reading made an impression on me. Arkas's words sank deep into my soul, and at that moment I felt that the power of those words was somehow turning my whole mental structure upside down. I began to understand why he was angry with the Cossacks. I was ashamed of myself for not asking myself the question: who am I and what am I? I was ashamed of myself for not knowing that "the Ukrainian nation is not yesterday's, but has a thousand-year history behind it," as I heard in Arkas's introduction. Thoughts swarmed in my head..."
Bohuslavsky did not stop there. Interested in the history of Ukraine, he gave Mykhailo a copy of Andrian Kashchenko's historical novel In the Heat of the Struggle, which fascinated him. Thus, along with learning to play the bandura, M. Teliha began reading Ukrainian books and conversations with his teacher, who, according to Mykhailo, "united young people around him, touched with his words his love for the native language, history, and everything that could lead to national education..."
It was in 1915 in Katerynodar, when Mykhailo Teliha was studying at a military medical school. Ahead of him was participation in the national liberation struggle, a meeting with Olena Teliha, whose "Ukrainisation" he had a significant influence on, later becoming her husband and sharing with her a tragic fate in Babyn Yar near Kyiv in 1942. And it all started with the seeds planted in his soul by his wise "grandfather" Bohuslavsky.
Another of his students, Vasyl Yemets, has fond memories of Bohuslavsky:
"I consider it my duty to mention Mykola Bohuslavskyi, who was called the bandura father in the Kuban region. A fitting name! Because when the bandura spread among the Kuban-Black Sea Cossacks... to the point where whole circles of new Cossack bandura players soon appeared, it was thanks to Mykola Bohuslavskyi. This descendant of Zaporizhzhia was a very ideological and officious person, because he loved the kobza business not only to the depths of his heart, but also to the depths of his pocket. Perhaps not every father cares about his children as much as a bandura father. Bohuslavskyi cared for his spiritual children, the Cossack youth, among whom he spread the bandura."
V. Yemets recalled that Bohuslavskyi also had children of his own, relatives in body but strangers in spirit:
"I remember how in the summer of 1916, when I was a guest at his summer house (dacha - M. Ch.) on the Black Sea coast in Gelendzhik, I met his guest one day. He was a well-dressed gentleman (we preserve some features of the original - Ed.) of about 35 years old, stubbornly using good Moscow language. He was probably of local origin, but he obviously understood Ukrainian, because both the owner of the house and I spoke Ukrainian. When the meal was over and we were left alone, I asked Bohuslavsky who he was treating in his house. Instead of answering, the bandura-playing father, with his head slightly bowed, stared at a certain point and remained silent. I was silent too, looking at his handsome Cossack face, with its long grey Zaporizhzhia moustache, which suddenly grew heavy and frowned. Finally, after a long, tense silence, I hear:
- "Yes, this is... my fellow soldier..." (he used the Moscow word for "fellow soldier").
Bohuslavsky said these few words with tension, as if he were squeezing them out of himself, and then fell silent... But after a moment of oppressive silence, Mykola Bohuslavsky, as if continuing an endless sentence, said in a certain voice, as if he wanted to straighten himself from an invisible burden:
- "This is my own son.
Vasyl Yemets says that Bohuslavskyi did not actually live with his Russian wife and children, a son and a daughter, under the same roof. They were his guests only occasionally.
"Sometime later, Bohuslavsky's wife and daughter came to visit, and I had the opportunity to get to know them," writes Yemets. Occasionally she would throw in a Ukrainian word, pronouncing it in the Moscow way. Her daughter, a grown-up girl, also spoke Moscow. She must have taken after her father, for one could feel the tenderness of a Cossack woman. The whole trio was somehow alien not only to me, but also to the distributor in the Kuban of the witness of the Hetman Cossack glory, our kobza-bandura. I felt that Mykola Bohuslavsky's family life was one of those wounds that do not heal until death. So after this incident, I never asked about his wife, daughter, or son again." (A similar situation, according to Chaplenko's recollections, occurred in the family of another local educator, Petro Yefremov).
"Mykola Bohuslavskyi, better known in the Kuban as the bandura father, writes Vasyl Yemets, contributed greatly to the growth of the number of Cossack bandura players by his distant fatherly influence on the Cossack youth. He repeatedly ordered banduras from the Kyiv master Antonii Paplynskyi at his own expense and distributed them to poorer Cossack youths, saying, "Take it, Cossack, and learn!" How happy he felt when he was lucky enough to interest some of the musicians of the Cossack Symphony Orchestra in the bandura! With the enthusiasm of a young man, he confided in me with his joys. They were not unfounded..."
Bohuslavsky organised two Kuban kobza schools at the Ekaterinodar Prosvita (1913, 1916), which had about forty students. The first school was run by the virtuoso bandura player Vasyl Yemets (1890-1982), and the second by Oleksii Obabko (1883-1971).
Returning to Katerynoslav
There is information that in the 1920s Bohuslavskyi moved from the Kuban to Katerynoslav (Dnipro) again. This is confirmed by an entry in the diary of academician Serhii Efremov, who visited Dnipro in June 1928:
"I looked for Mykola Bohuslavskyi, an old acquaintance, a surprisingly good man. I also met him almost crying. He is very poor. He has a pension for 40 years of service of 18 krb. Another piece of the past..."
Bohuslavskyi probably lived in the railway village of Katerynske, which was renamed after the revolution into the village of K. Marx and is now called the Ihren residential area. The same place was home to Trifon Tataryn, an educator who was arrested in April 1938. During his interrogation on 17 June 1938, he had to testify that "I started my nationalist activities in 1908, when I became a member of the Prosvita Society, headed at that time in the former Yekaterinoslav province by Ukrainian nationalists; Bohuslavsky, Bidnov, Lipkivsky, Doroshenko, Yavornytsky and Truba, under whose influence I was also... In 1926, I often visited my friend Bohuslavsky, a former Ukrainian nationalist activist. A former Ukrainian nationalist activist who kept in touch with people abroad, in particular with Bidnov, who was then in Prague. Bidnov suggested that Bohuslavsky write his biography, which should reflect the mood of the Ukrainian people in the Katerynoslav region and their hopes for the future. Bohuslavsky instructed me to fulfil Bidnov's proposal, which I did. However, I do not know whether Bidnov received this manuscript, because Bohuslavsky did not inform me about it." Thus, V. Bidnov, who considered Bohuslavsky to be an ideal distributor of Ukrainian books, not only corresponded with Bohuslavsky, but also ordered his biography. If it even reached Bidnov, it is unlikely to have survived: Bidnov ordered his archive to be destroyed after his death.
Almost nothing is known about the last years of Boguslavsky's life. According to V. Yemets, the "Oceanic Collection" (part 7, 1946), published on a rotary in exile, contained the "Solovetska Duma" by kobzar Andriy Perebendi. The preface to the duma reads:
"The events of the glorious memory of the 'grandfather beekeeper' M. O. Bohuslavsky in Dnipropetrovs'k raised funds for the purchase of a kobza, which was painted and sent to me in the Solovetsky camp."
This eloquent fact shows that the bandura-playing father took care of even imprisoned kobza players.
"It is evident that even when he was in Dnipro," writes V. Yemets, "the bandura father Mykola Bohuslavskyi did the same thing as in the Kuban, where he bought kobzas for school Cossack youth with his own money.
"I heard from several people that in 1930-1933 he was in prison in Yekaterinodar with the Ukrainian writer Vasyl Chaplenko and ended his life there. (This fact is not confirmed by the memoirs of Chaplenko himself - M. Ch.) My student Cossack Antin Chornyi and Vasyl Farmiga mentioned this in their letters... Dr Plokhy also mentions the prison, although he does not give any reason for the place of his death."
According to Oleksiy Nyrko, a kobzar from Yalta and a researcher of kobzars, Bohuslavsky died in a prison in Katerynodar. This fact has not yet been documented.
His great-grandson now lives in Dnipro. His descendants also live in Sevastopol.
Commemorating the memory
The poet Yakiv Zharko dedicated a poem to Bohuslavskyi in the pages of Dniprovi Wavy (1912).
The image of Bohuslavsky as Bohush's grandfather was created by the educator T. Mytrus in his novel "In the Springtime" (Katerynoslav, 1912).
There is a street named after Bohuslavskyi in Kyiv.
