“...My village is called Zatyshok”: the last years of Marko Kropyvnytskyi

Abstract

The article highlights the last years of Marko Kropyvnytskyi life when he lived in his homestead in Kharkiv region. It is emphasized that at the turn of the ХІХ – ХХ centuries the playwright successfully practiced agriculture in his small village Zatyshok, here he organized a powerful cultural center which many well-known personalities visited. There in that time country he founded one of the first school with a Ukrainian language of teaching as well as organized a children theater group which did not have any analogues in the history of the world theater as peasants’ children acted there as actors. This theater as well as the national professional theater which was founded by M. Kropyvnytskyi earlier on the territory of Ukraine which at that time was incorporated in the Russian Empire promoted the assertion of the national culture, led the Ukrainians to think about the development of their own state.