People · Kyivans in history

Famous KyivansWriters and poets

Princes and saints, poets and aviators, patrons and adventurers — people who were born, lived or worked in Kyiv. Biographies, addresses and places to visit.

56 people
11 categories
12 centuries (X–XXI c.)

Writers and poets

8 people

Lesya UkrainkaPoet and playwright1871–1913Author of The Forest Song, who lived in Kyiv from the 1880s. The Kosach family house at 97 Saksahanskoho St is now a museum, and she is buried in Baikove Cemetery.
Mikhail BulgakovNovelist and playwright1891–1940Kyiv-born author of The Master and Margarita and The White Guard. His home at 13 Andriyivskyy Descent, where he lived in 1906–1919, is now a museum.
Taras ShevchenkoPoet and artist1814–1861The author of Kobzar lived in Kyiv in 1846–1847 in a house on Kozyne Boloto (now a museum), worked for the Archaeographic Commission and was arrested here.
Ivan Nechuy-LevytskyNovelist1838–1918A classic of Ukrainian prose and author of The Kaidash Family. He studied at the Kyiv Theological Academy, lived in Kyiv from 1885 until his death in 1918 and is buried in Baikove.
Sholem AleichemYiddish writer1859–1916Classic of Yiddish literature and author of Tevye the Dairyman. He lived in Kyiv in 1887–1890 and 1893–1905, portraying it as “Yehupets”; Kyiv has a museum in his honour.
Konstantin PaustovskyWriter1892–1968A prose writer who grew up in Kyiv, attending the First Kyiv Gymnasium and Kyiv University; he described his Kyiv childhood in Distant Years, the first book of his Story of a Life.
Viktor NekrasovWriter and dissident1911–1987Kyiv-born author of In the Trenches of Stalingrad. In 1959 he was the first to call publicly for a Babyn Yar memorial; he lived in the Passage at 15 Khreshchatyk until forced into exile in 1974.
Maksym RylskyPoet and translator1895–1964Kyiv-born Neoclassicist poet and translator of Pan Tadeusz. He spent his last years in Holosiiv, at 7 Rylskoho St, where his house is now a museum.