Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich was a popularizer of science, a publisher, a translator, an encyclopedist and a developer of the Russian type (called also a civil script introduced in place of Church Slavonic).
Background
Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich was born around 1651 into a family of petty gentry. His exact birth-place is not known, it could be in Minsk or Brest regions. It was an uneasy time as the war of Russia with Rzeczpospolita of 1654-1667 was going on. When a 9-year-old boy, Ilya was taken to Tver area from where he soon fled to Moscow. Six years later he returned to his homeland with M. Ciechanowiecki, the governor of the Mstislavl Province, who had come to Moscow for peace talks.
Education
Ilya’s studies at Slutsk Calvinist school were of crucial importance for the formation of his outlook. He received a thorough knowledge at school and mastered several foreign languages. It was there that he revealed his knack for the humanities.
Still a student, Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich took a position of a lecturer-tutor for junior classes in 1674. It is not known exactly when and how Ilya Kapiyevich got to Holland. Some researchers put forward religious motives, charges with the treason against the king, the accusation of his parents of the treason against Rzeczpospolita during the war. The known fact is that their family estate got into possession of the Catholic Church and Ilya had to leave his homelandto find himself in Amsterdam.
In 1697, a Russian mission headed by Peter I arrived in Holland. A meeting of Kapiyevich, who was then the candidate for the priest at Amsterdam Cathedral, with the Russian tsar changed his life radically. The tsar noticed the modest church assistant who spoke Russian and was also an expert in many sciences. That was the reason why Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich was invited immediately to be a teacher of foreign languages and of some sciences for Peter I himself and for other members of the mission. Leaving Amsterdam, the tsar commissioned Kapiyevich not only to continue teaching the Russian nobility, who came to the West to master "foreign sciences", but also to compile a number of books needed for establishing education in Russia itself. Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich agreed to do it with pleasure and devoted the rest of his life to educational activities for the benefit of East Slavic nations.
In 1707, Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich swore allegiance to Russia and became a translator at the Posolsky Prikaz (foreign affairs department). In 1708, Kapiyevich arrived in Warsaw, where on the tsar’s order he joined the Russian troops commanded by I.Brus. Ilya Fyodaravich Kapiyevich spent the rest of his life in Moscow.