Olena Pchilka. The life and work of Lesya Ukrainka’s mother

Olena Pchilka is known as a poet, translator, folklorist and social activist. Throughout her life, the writer supported the Ukrainian language, traditions and culture, and advocated for women’s rights and equal education.

Biography

Olena Pchilka was born on 29 June 1849. Her real name was Olha Drahomanova-Kosach. She is the mother of the poetess Lesya Ukrainka.

Olena came from the famous Drahomanov family, which had been known since the Hetmanate. The future writer’s ancestors worked in the diplomatic service of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The Decembrist Yakiv Drahomanov, her uncle, died in exile in Siberia.

Olena’s father wrote poetry, received a law degree, was fond of literature, short stories, and collected folk art. The writer herself spoke with pride about her parents, as in a dark and cruel time, children grew up without seeing any ‘wild scenes’.

Olena Pchilka in 1890

She received primary education at home. From the age of 12, Olha Drahomanova studied at the Kyiv Boarding School for Noble Girls.

In 1868, she and her husband moved to Zvyagel. In the city, she was engaged in ethnography, recording songs, folk customs, rituals, and collected samples of folk embroidery.

His daughter Larysa was born on 25 February 1871. It was she who entered Ukrainian and world literature as Lesia Ukrainka. In total, Olena raised two sons and four daughters.

Works

In Kyiv in 1876, she published the book ‘Ukrainian Folk Ornament’. In 1880, Pchilka published Stepan Rudansky’s Songs at her own expense.

In 1883, she began publishing poems and short stories in the Lviv magazine Zorya, her first being a collection of poems called Thoughts of a Merezhanka (1886). The writer also took an active part in the Ukrainian women’s movement, and together with Natalia Kobrynska she published the almanac The First Wreath (1887) in Lviv.

Olha Kosach (Olena Pchilka). Vienna, 1891

In the spring of 1879, Olena Kosach decided to move to Lutsk. The move was connected with her husband’s work.

In Lutsk, the prominent figure joined a dramatic society, and she offered to use the money raised from the performances to buy Ukrainian books for the club’s library.

She also lived for some time in Kyiv on Mariinsko-Blahovyschenska Street in the 1890s. At the unveiling of the monument to Ivan Kotliarevskyi in Poltava in 1903, she was the only representative of sub-Russian Ukraine to speak in Ukrainian, in violation of the categorical ban imposed by the tsarist authorities.

In 1906-1914, she was the publisher of the magazine Ridnyi Krai with the supplement Moloda Ukraina (1908-1914) and the Gazeta Hadiach Zemstvo (1917-1919).

In 1905, Olena Pchilka was among four delegates of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in St. Petersburg who, in negotiations with the tsarist prime minister Count Sergei Witte, unsuccessfully sought the lifting of the long-standing ban on Ukrainian-language printing and education.

She sharply accused the tsarist regime of the tragic events in Velyki Sorochyntsi in December 1905.
In 1906-1914, she was the publisher of the magazine Ridnyi Krai with the supplement Moloda Ukraina (1908-1914) and the Gazeta Hadiach Zemstva (1917-1919).

Olena Pchilka, 1910s

In the 1920s, she was arrested in Hadiach for anti-Bolshevik activities. After her release, she moved to Mohyliv-Podilskyi, where she stayed until 1924, and from then on she lived in Kyiv until her death.

She died on 4 October 1930. She was buried on 7 October in Kyiv at the Baikove Cemetery.