Sofia Rusova

Sofia Fedorivna Rusova (1856 to 1940) was a Ukrainian educator, writer, women's rights advocate and political activist. Born Sofia Lindfors in the village of Oleshnia and raised in Kyiv, she and her sister Maria studied early childhood education and in 1872 opened Kyiv's first kindergarten. She went on to organise Sunday schools and public readings, wrote a Ukrainian alphabet book and a geography schoolbook, served as professor of education at the Froebel Pedagogical Institute in Kyiv and argued for the right to be taught in the native language. In 1917 she joined the Central Council of Ukraine and, in the Ministry of Education department for preschool and adult education, supervised the founding of 66 schools and 21 gymnasiums that taught in Ukrainian. She was a founding member and first president of the National Council of Ukrainian Women and of the All-Ukrainian Teachers' Association. After leaving Soviet Ukraine in 1922 she settled in Prague, where she headed the pedagogical chair of the Drahomanov Higher Pedagogical Institute and taught at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute from 1924 to 1939.