The Belarusian estate of Ya. F. Golovatsky

Abstract

The article describes the history of Votnya, a small estate on the right bank of Dniepr river in Bykhovsky uyezd of Mahilyow Governorate, at the time it belonged to the well-known slavist Ya. F. Golovatsky and his family. After Ya. F. Golovatsky ceased to be a professor of Lviv University, he, a subject of the Austrian Empire, spent here at least two years in total surrounded by the local Belarusians, predominantly Or-thodox. Ya. F. Golovatskij would regularly come here year after year in the summer months. He invested “all his savings” into the development and improvement of his Belarusian estate and created a strong household with a beautiful park. For Ya. F. Golovatsky, Votnya gradually became a vibrant research laboratory to study both the past and the present of Belarusians. This was refl ected, for example, in his assessment of the famous “Dictionary of the Belarusian dialect” by I. I. Nosovich. For many years after the death of the owner of Votnya in 1888, his widow and daughters lived in the estate. It brought income that was also used to create a special scholarship foundation named after Yakov Golovatsky in the framework of the Shevchenko Scientifi c society in Lviv.