The Kvitka-Osnovianenko Ukrainian Society was founded in Kharkiv in 1912 and was dedicated to promoting Ukrainian culture, organizing lectures on ethnography, and, as we can see from the advertisement, fostering the development of Ukrainian choral singing.

Among the society’s founders were such well-known members of the Kharkiv intelligentsia as D. Bagaliy, M. Sumtsov, K. Alchevska, and others.

One of the leading figures in the Kvitka-Osnovianenko Society was Kostyantyn Bich-Lubensky, who provided the society with his own house at Eparkhialnaya Street, 26 (now Alchevskyh Street).

His brother, Ivan, on the other hand, was a monarchist and member of the Black Hundreds, and ran against Bagaliy in the 1914 mayoral election. While Ivan’s fate is known—he was executed by the Cheka in Yalta in 1920—the fate of Kostyantyn Bich-Lubensky, alas, is completely lost to history after 1917.