Taras Shevchenko (Ukrainian: Тарас Шевченко; Russian: Тарас Владимирович Шевченко; born Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (Тарас Григорович Шевченко) on January 27, 1814 in Kamyanets-Podilskyi, near Kiev. He studied at the gymnasium in Odessa, and law at the University of Kiev, but was more interested in poetry, literature, and history. After reading Pushkin's "Rus'" he began to write poems. His first collection of poems was published in 1834 under the name of T
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Hryhorovych Shevchenko, but after seeing John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" he changed his name to Taras Shevchenko. He also wrote patriotic essays and was active in the revolutionary movement against the Russian Empire. By 1848 Shevchenko had become a member of the Ukrainian national organization known as the Brotherhoods of the Holy Spirit.
He submitted an essay on peasant life to Nicholas I in which he stated his views on education. In 1849 Nicholas I summoned him to St. Petersburg where he discussed ideas with Count Paul Ivanovich Speranskii about creating a national university in Kiev that would promote Ukrainian culture and help unite Ukrainians with Russians into one nation.
With funding from Speranskii an academy for Ukrainian studies was approved in 1850 called the Imperial Academy of Arts in St.
Petersburg. However, when Czar Nicholas died in 1855, his successor Alexander II dismissed most of Shevchenko's collaborators from government positions because they supported Ukrainian nationalism.
Shevchenko continued to publish poetry and articles for his newspaper "The Voice of Ukraine". He became active with groups promoting Ukrainian nationalism by editing a newspaper called Enotsia Ukraïns'ka ("Encyclopedia of Ukraine").
In 1861 he went to Berlin where he worked closely with Prince Vladimir Dalitz who financed several printing presses for Potots Pototskyi who published "The Encyclopaedia of Ukraine".
In 1863 he returned to Saint Petersburg where he began work on a history of Ukraine that was never completed due to his imprisonment for sedition in 1866–18
