Afanasiev-Chuzhbynsky, Oleksander [Afanas'jev-Čužbyns’kyj] (pseud of Oleksander S. Afanasiev), b 11 March 1816 in Iskivtsi, Poltava gubernia, d 18 September 1875 in Saint Petersburg. (Photo: Oleksander Afanasiev-Chuzhbynsky.) Romantic poet, ethnographer, and belletrist. Afanasiev-Chuzhbynsky graduated from the Nizhen Lyceum. His poems, written in Ukrainian, appeared in the almanacs Lastôvka and Molodyk and in the journal Osnova (-NL-->Saint Petersburg). Some of his poems later became folk songs. A separate collection of poems entitled Shcho bulo na sertsi (What Lay on My Heart) appeared in 1885. In the 1850s Afanasiev-Chuzhbynsky visited Ukraine with an ethnographic expedition and subsequently described his journey in the book Poezdka v Iuzhnuiu Rossiiu (A Trip to Southern Russia, I–II, 1861). He published a great deal of Ukrainian ethnographic material in Russian journals. Afanasiev-Chuzhbynsky's dictionary of the Ukrainian language (Slovar' malorusskogo narechiia) was published only in part (A–Z, 1855). His Russian prose dealt, to a great extent, with Ukrainian themes. In 1843–6 Afanasiev-Chuzhbynsky became acquainted with Taras Shevchenko and published ‘Vospominaniia o T.G. Shevchenko' (Reminiscences of T.H. Shevchenko) in Russkoe slovo, no. 5, 1861.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]