Three years ago Taras Shevchenko’s great-great-grandson Mykola Lysenko presented the first edition of his book The Roots of the Shevchenko Clan. Recently its reprint was brought out by Apriori Publishers. It includes a family tree and reminiscences about the Kobzar.
Did you know that currently there are 1,300 living descendants of Shevchenko? Some of them had no idea that they were scions of such a family, and were pleasantly shocked when they came across Lysenko’s book. The Bilyks, Lysenkos, Solokhs, and Shevchenkos live in Cherkasy oblast. The Antonenkos and Malyshkos live in Kyiv oblast. Fate scattered Shevchenko’s descendants far and wide: in the Baltics, Russia, France, the US, Britain, Poland, Japan, Australia, just to name a few.
Curiously, this clan knows a number of outstanding figures: journalists Andrii Shevchenko and Oleksandr Lysenko, ballerina Natalia Filatova, writers Dmytro Krasytsky, Liudmyla Krasytska, and Oleksandr Vidomenko, painters Yakiv Shevchenko, Hanna Chernetsova, and others.
The book is illustrated with age-old family photos found by the author.
“This publication seeks to preserve information about my ancestors and hand on this knowledge to the generations to come,” says the author. “I consider it important to encourage others to take pains and perpetuate the memory of their ancestors. Another key goal was to learn about the culture, geography, and popular traditions of those countries where Shevchenko’s descendants are living. In my opinion, this work will help the young generation realize that we are the masters on Ukrainian soil.”
