Pavlo Oleksandrovych Gnidych
He was born on 26 November (8 December according to the new calendar) 1884 in Poltava into a modest noble family. The ‘the Romny region’ held a special place in his work. Between 1912 and 1914, Pavlo Gnidych conducted expeditions through the villages of the Romny district, including Batsmany, Havrylivka, Malyi Bubny, Dovhopolivka, Salohubivka, Zhytne and Rogynci.
He recorded folk songs, fairy tales, legends, rituals and other examples of oral folk art. In total, the researcher collected over two thousand items of folklore. Pavlo Hnidych died in 1919, leaving behind a valuable legacy, thanks to which we can today hear and see the living traditional culture of the Romny region from the early 20th century.
The project was carried out by a team from the Romny City Council’s ‘Centre for the Development of Culture and Tourism’.
Boris Dmitrievich Antonenko-Davydovych
A Ukrainian writer, translator, journalist and linguist, as well as a researcher and champion of the Ukrainian language. He was born on 5 August 1899 in the village of Zasulya, on the outskirts of Romny, into the family of a railway worker. He studied at the Okhtyrka Gymnasium, and later at the universities of Kharkiv and Kyiv. He took part in the national liberation struggle of 1917–1920.
In the 1920s, he was actively involved in the fields of education and literature. He wrote prose and journalistic pieces, worked as a translator, and the Ukrainian language held a special place in his work.
In 1935, the writer was arrested and sentenced to a long prison term. Upon his return to Kyiv, he continued his literary and linguistic work, and his writings had a significant influence on the Ukrainian dissident movement.
Boris Antonenko-Davydovych died on 8 May 1984 in Kyiv. In 1992, posthumously, he was awarded the Taras Shevchenko State Prize of Ukraine.
“Romny Region: History in Names”. Episode one — Petro Kalnyshevsky
We are starting a series of short films about the people whose names are written into the history of the hromada. First: a native of Pustoviitivka, the last kish otaman of the Zaporozhian Sich.
Petro Kalnyshevsky was born in Pustoviitivka — a village that still belongs to the Romny urban territorial hromada today. He became the last kish otaman of the Zaporozhian Sich, a statesman and a diplomat.
Under his rule the Sich developed farming and livestock, beekeeping and crafts, founded new homesteads and settlements, and built up trade with other countries. “The strength of a state begins with the labour of its people” — that is how the episode sums up his stewardship.
In 1775, on the orders of Catherine II, the Sich was destroyed and Kalnyshevsky was arrested. He spent more than twenty-five years imprisoned on the Solovetsky Islands — and he did not break.
A monument to the otaman stands in Pustoviitivka, and beside it the wooden Church of the Holy Trinity, which he helped to build. Both are on the hromada map, and both can be examined in 3D.
Episode two — Ivan Kavaleridze
Sculptor, film director and playwright, born in the Romny region. His first monumental statue of Taras Shevchenko has stood in the centre of Romny since 1918.
Ivan Kavaleridze worked in several arts at once: sculpture, cinema, drama and painting. His work became part of Ukrainian culture, and he himself was a native of the Romny region.
His most important work for the hromada is the monument to Taras Shevchenko in Romny, unveiled in 1918. It is the world’s first monumental statue of the poet, and it still stands on Shevchenka Boulevard.
The episode asks why we remember Kavaleridze, and how his sculptures, films and plays shaped national memory.
