Stepan Smal’-Stots’kyi was a Ukrainian linguist, educator, civic activist, and a cultural and economical leader in the Bukovyna region, though he was born in Galicia in the village of Nemyliv, today Chervonohrads’kyi raion, L’viv oblast’, Ukraine. He studied at the universities in Chernivtsi and Vienna. He was one of the leaders of the national cultural renaissance of Bukovyna that opposed the Russophilian movement. He was the author of a school textbook on Ukrainian grammar and his efforts led to the introduction of phonetic spelling in the schools of Bukovyna. After researching the history of Ukrainian nominal declensions, Smal’-Stots’kyi along with T. Gartner wrote a Grammar of the Ukrainian Language in German. He served as a deputy to the Bukovynian Soim from 1892 to 1911, and to the Vienna Parliament from 1911 to 1918. As an activist of the Soyuz Vyzvolennia Ukrainy, he conducted cultural outreach at the Rastatt POW camp during World War I. In 1917 he became the head of the “Boiova Uprava” (“Combat Administration”) of the Sich Riflemen. In 1919 he served as ambassador of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic in Prague, where he would live until his death. In addition to working at the Ukrainian Free University, he was also the head of the Museum of the Struggle for Liberation of Ukraine in Prague and was the first president of the Ukrainian Mohyla-Mazepa Academy of Sciences. He was a full member of Shevchenko Scientific Society (from 1889) and the Free Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (from 1918). He was the father of linguist and community activist Roman Smal'-Stots'kyi.