On April 21, 1910, while returning to his estate, Zatyshok (Kharkiv Governorate), from a tour in Odessa, one of the greatest figures in Ukrainian culture passed away.

It was the Almighty’s will that Marko Lukych Kropyvnytskyi should warm people’s hearts with his talent for only 69 years. But what years they were!

At that time, Kropyvnytskyi was renowned as Ukraine’s most brilliant actor in comic and everyday roles, as well as a playwright, and was considered one of the foremost experts on and interpreters of Cossack life in Ukraine. Over the course of his 47-year career in theater, Marko Kropyvnytskyi wrote forty-eight plays, a significant number of which have become part of the treasure trove of Ukrainian classical drama.

Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, the Russian Empire’s leading book magnate, publisher, writer, theater critic, and playwright, writes in his books that “Kropyvnytskyi is not only an incomparable actor, but also an equally incomparable director…”

Mark Lukich was buried in our city at the municipal cemetery. Mykola Mikhnovsky, who was living in Kharkiv at the time, wrote the following in his article “The Death of Marko Kropyvnytskyi,” published in the newspaper *Utro*:

…It was not merely a great artist with a magical gift who had passed away; it was a national writer, a national figure from a time when few dared to be national figures, when it was so easy, under the guise of cosmopolitanism, to turn one’s back on the suffering of one’s people…

Just a few days after the funeral, the Kharkiv City Council received a petition from the Ukrainian public proposing that a monument to Kropyvnytskyi be erected in Theater Square, next to the monuments to Pushkin and Gogol. However, the powers that be decided that it was not fitting for the Genius of Ukrainian Theater to stand alongside the great writers.
It was not until April 3, 1914, that Kropyvnytskyi’s long-awaited monument was unveiled in Kharkiv—but only at his grave.

In issue No. 17 of the 1914 edition of the newspaper *Iskra*, we find the following text and unique photographs:

A Monument to an Artist.
On April 3, a monument to M. L. Kropyvnytskyi, the “father” of the Little Russian theater, was unveiled at the city cemetery in Kharkiv. A bronze bust of Kropyvnytskyi is mounted on a heavy granite block. A large crowd, city officials, and delegations attended the unveiling ceremony. Many wreaths were laid. At the conclusion of the memorial service, the chairman of the Ukrainian student club delivered a brief speech in memory of the artist. Then V. N. Demyanenko spoke on behalf of the city government…

That cemetery has long since disappeared; today, it’s Youth Park. However, the grave of the “father of Ukrainian theater” has been preserved. And the bust on it is the very one created in 1914 by the sculptor F. Balavensky…