Background
Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov was born on May 16, 1817 in settlement Yurasovka of Ostrogozhsky district, Russian Federation.
Kostomarov in His Coffin (by Ilya Repin)
Book on existence of the Ukrainian people, 1921; Ideological program of the St Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood
Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov was born on May 16, 1817 in settlement Yurasovka of Ostrogozhsky district, Russian Federation.
He graduated from the Voronezh gymnasium in and the Faculty of History and Philology of Kharkov University.
Nikolai Ivanovich was a Professor of Kiev University, Professor of Russian History of St. Petersburg University. He was engaged in literary activity. Kostomarov was also a romantic author and poet, a member of the Kharkiv Romantic School. He published two poetry collections (Ukrainian Ballads (1839) and The Branch (1840)), both collections containing historical poems mostly about Kievan Rus' and Bohdan Khmelnytsky. His poetry is known for including vocabulary and other elements of traditional Ukrainian folk songs.
He also wrote historical dramas, however these had little influence on the development of Ukrainian theater. He also wrote prose in Russian (the novelette Kudeyar, 1875), and Russian mixed with Ukrainian (Chernigovka, 1881), but these also are considered insignificant.
Kostomarov was a very religious man and a devout adherent of the Orthodox Church. He was critical of Catholic and Polish influences on Ukraine throughout the centuries, but, nevertheless, was considered as more open to Catholic culture than many of his Russian contemporaries, and later, the members of the Slavic Benevolent Societies.
Nikolai Ivanovich was also active in cultural politics in the Russian Empire being a proponent of a Pan-Slavic and federalized political system. He was a major personality in the Ukrainian national awakening, a friend of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, a defender of the Ukrainian language in literature and in the schools, and a proponent of a populist form of Pan-Slavism, a popular movement in a certain part of the intelligentsia of his time. In the 1840s he founded an illegal political organization called the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Kiev (for which he suffered arrest, imprisonment, and exile), and through the 1860s to the 1880s he continued to promote the ideas of federalism and populism in Ukrainian and Russian historical thought.