Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the famous Ukrainian writer, historian, and translator Panteleimon Kulish’s 200th birthday, born on this day in 1819. Through his literary works, including the epic poem Ukraïna, and historical novels like Chorna Rada (The Black Council), Panteleimon Kulish set up a cultural identity for his country, the second biggest nation on the European continent after Russia. Kulish was additionally the first person to translate the Bible into the Ukrainian language.

Brought up in a poor family of Cossack descent, Panteleimon Kulish was not permitted to complete his studies at Kyiv University, since his family was not of the noble class. Nevertheless, he had the option to hold different teaching positions, as well as become a prolific writer. Inspired by the Cossacks, who were adventurous outdoorsmen who battled for a free Ukrainian state during the seventeenth century, Panteleimon Kulish and the poet Taras Shevchenko were at the front line of a Ukrainian national revival.

In spite of the fact that the nation was led by Russia during his lifetime, Panteleimon Kulish’s composition—vigorously affected by European Romantic literature and the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott—supported the one of a kind qualities of Ukrainian legacy and culture. He joined Shevchenko in the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, a mystery society that looked for independence for Ukraine. Thus, he was arrested by Tsarist police and imprisoned in 1847 preceding being ousted to the Russian city of Tula for three years.

Panteleimon Kulish wedded the writer Hanna Barvinok, set up his own printing press, and kept on publish and translate for an incredible duration. Notes on the Southern Rus, his accumulation of Ukrainian folklore, is as yet studied by numerous individuals right up ’til the present time.