Tyshchynsky, Oleksander [Тищинський, Олександер; Tyščyns'kyj], b 17 July 1835 in Holubychi, Horodnia county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 9 February 1896 in Chernihiv. Civic and political activist and journalist. He was expelled from Kharkiv University, Kyiv University, and Dorpat University in the latter 1850s for his political activities (as a member of the Kharkiv-Kyiv Secret Society and coauthor of an 1860 Ukrainophile ‘manifesto’) and general insubordination. He was arrested in 1863 in conjunction with a Third Section investigation and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg. Subsequent ministerial orders gave him a bureaucratic position in Chernihiv under the watchful eye of the gubernial governor. There Tyshchynsky pressed hard for zemstvo reform. He put his ideas into practice as president of the Chernihiv county zemstvo for a nine-year period, until a conservative backlash forced him out of that post. He obtained a position as deputy director of the Chernihiv municipal bank, where he pursued a loans policy generally favorable to peasant needs. He was also active in numerous civic organizations and established a library and a bookstore in Chernihiv.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]