Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi was a Ukrainian historian, organizer of Ukrainian scholarship, political leader, and author. He was a student of V. Antonovych. From 1834, on the recommendation of Antonovych, he was appointed to the chair of Ukrainian History (officially – "professor of history with special emphasis on Eastern Europe") at L'viv University. In 1897, he became the president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in L'viv. There he created a school of the history of Ukraine, along with S. Tomashivs’kyi, O. Terlets’kyi, M. Korduba, I. Krypiakevych, and others. He invited I. Franko to work with him. In 1898, Hrushevs’kyi became one of the editors of the Literaturno-Naukovyi Visnyk, which he founded with Franko. With the demise of the Ukrainian Tsentral’na Rada in 1919, he left Ukraine. In Vienna he founded the Ukrainian Sociological Institute. In 1924, he was invited to become a full member of Ukrainian Academy of Scienses in Kyiv. In 1929, as the Russian Soviet grip on Ukrainian culture became acute, Hrushevs’kyi was sent to Moscow and the scholarly institutions which he had founded were liquidated, and his coworkers were arrested and exiled. These intolerable conditions and persecutions had a negative effect on Hrushevs’kyi’s health. He died in 1934 in Kislodsk, a resort where he went for his health.

E. Faryniak worked for the “Ukrainian Bazaar” a publisher and bookstore in Detroit. Hrushevs’kyi sent him Ukrainian books to sell. From the money received for these books, Hrushevs'kyi was able to make a living and fund the Sociological Institute in Vienna.