The Most Famous
SOCIAL ACTIVISTS from Ukraine
This page contains a list of the greatest Ukrainian Social Activists. The pantheon dataset contains 538 Social Activists, 9 of which were born in Ukraine. This makes Ukraine the birth place of the 15th most number of Social Activists behind Poland and Switzerland.
Top 9
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Ukrainian Social Activists of all time. This list of famous Ukrainian Social Activists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Simon Wiesenthal (1908 - 2005)
With an HPI of 69.41, Simon Wiesenthal is the most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 52 different languages on wikipedia.
Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 1908 – 20 September 2005) was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp (late 1941 to September 1944), the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp (September to October 1944), the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp (February to May 1945). After the war, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. In 1947, he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for future war crime trials and aided refugees in their search for lost relatives. He opened the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime in Vienna in 1961 and continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals. He played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, who was captured by Mossad in Buenos Aires in 1960, and worked closely with the Austrian justice ministry to prepare a dossier on Franz Stangl, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971. In the 1970s and 1980s, Wiesenthal was involved in two high-profile events involving Austrian politicians. Shortly after Bruno Kreisky, a Jew himself, was inaugurated as Austrian chancellor in April 1970, Wiesenthal pointed out to the press that four of his new cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky, angry, called Wiesenthal a "Jewish fascist", likened his organisation to the Mafia, and accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. Wiesenthal successfully sued for libel, the suit ending in 1989. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose service in the Wehrmacht and probable knowledge of the Holocaust were revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections. Wiesenthal, embarrassed that he had previously cleared Waldheim of any wrongdoing, suffered negative publicity as a result of this event. With a reputation as a storyteller, Wiesenthal was the author of several memoirs containing tales that are only loosely based on actual events. In particular, he exaggerated his role in the capture of Eichmann in 1960. Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna in 2005 and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in Los Angeles, is named in his honour.
2. Fanny Kaplan (1890 - 1918)
With an HPI of 64.74, Fanny Kaplan is the 2nd most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. Her biography has been translated into 39 different languages.
Fanny Efimovna Kaplan (Russian: Фанни Ефимовна Каплан; real name Feiga Haimovna Roytblat; Фейга Хаимовна Ройтблат; February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918) was a Russian Socialist-Revolutionary who attempted to assassinate Vladimir Lenin. She was arrested and executed by the Cheka in 1918. Born into a Jewish family, Kaplan served a sentence of hard labor during the tsarist years for her revolutionary activities. As a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Kaplan viewed Lenin as a "traitor to the revolution" when the Bolsheviks enacted one-party rule and banned her party. On August 30, 1918, she approached Lenin, who was leaving a Moscow factory, and fired three shots, which badly injured him. Interrogated by the Cheka, she refused to name any accomplices and was executed. The Kaplan attempt and the Moisei Uritsky assassination were used by the government of Soviet Russia for the reinstatement of capital punishment, which had been abolished by the Russian Provisional Government in March 1917.
3. Georgy Gapon (1870 - 1906)
With an HPI of 61.30, Georgy Gapon is the 3rd most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.
Georgy Apollonovich Gapon (17 February [O.S. 5 February] 1870 –10 April [O.S. 28 March] 1906) was a Russian Orthodox priest and a popular working-class leader before the 1905 Russian Revolution. After he was discovered to be a police informant, Gapon was murdered by members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Father Gapon is mainly remembered as an agent provocateur who led a peaceful crowd of protesters on Bloody Sunday to be met by firing squads of Imperial Russian Army.
4. Alexander Pechersky (1909 - 1990)
With an HPI of 59.02, Alexander Pechersky is the 4th most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.
Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Аро́нович Пече́рский; 22 February 1909 – 19 January 1990) was one of the organizers, and the leader, of the most successful uprising and mass-escape of Jews from a Nazi extermination camp during World War II, which occurred at the Sobibor extermination camp on 14 October 1943. In 1948, Pechersky was arrested by the Soviet authorities along with his brother during the countrywide Rootless cosmopolitan campaign against Jews suspected of pro-Western leanings but released later due in part to mounting international pressure. Pechersky was prevented by the Soviet government from leaving the country to testify in international trials related to Sobibor, including the Eichmann Trial in Israel; foreign investigators were only allowed to collect his testimony under KGB supervision. The last time he was refused permission to exit the country and testify was in 1987, for a trial in Poland.
5. Sergei Kovalev (1930 - 2021)
With an HPI of 56.48, Sergei Kovalev is the 5th most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.
Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov (also spelled Sergey Kovalev; Russian: Сергей Адамович Ковалёв; 2 March 1930 – 9 August 2021) was a Russian human rights activist and politician. During the Soviet period he was a dissident and, after 1975, a political prisoner.
6. David Riazanov (1870 - 1938)
With an HPI of 54.34, David Riazanov is the 6th most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.
David Riazanov (Russian: Дави́д Ряза́нов), born David Borisovich Goldendakh (Russian: Дави́д Бори́сович Гольдендах; 10 March 1870 – 21 January 1938), was a Russian revolutionary, historian, bibliographer and archivist. Riazanov founded the Marx–Engels Institute and edited the first large-scale effort to publish the collected works of these two founders of the modern socialist movement. Riazanov was a prominent victim of the Great Terror of the late 1930s.
7. Olga Lepeshinskaya (1916 - 2008)
With an HPI of 46.67, Olga Lepeshinskaya is the 7th most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. Her biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Olga Vasilyevna Lepeshinskaya (Russian: Ольга Васильевна Лепешинская; 28 September [O.S. 15 September] 1916 – 20 December 2008) was a Soviet ballerina. She was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1951.
8. Anna Sharyhina (1978 - )
With an HPI of 31.96, Anna Sharyhina is the 8th most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. Her biography has been translated into 23 different languages.
Anna Borysivna Sharyhina (born c.1978) is a Ukrainian feminist and LGBT activist. She is a cofounder of the Sphere Women's Association, a lesbian feminist organisation in Kharkiv, and of the NGO Kyiv Pride, the organizing committee of the Pride Parade in Kyiv. Sharyhina has been born into a Russian speaking family. Sharyhina and her partner, Vira Chemygina, have been involved in the Ukrainian LGBT community and lesbian organizations for over a decade. They organized Kyiv's first walks for equality. Kyiv's second walk for equality, held in 2015, was accompanied by police and had the support of a range of public figures. However, the march only lasted 15 minutes because of extreme-right violence against the marchers. Ten people, including police officers guarding the event, were injured. Sharyhina's feminist and LGBT activity has faced continued opposition in Ukraine. When she gave a lecture on LGBT movements at a Kharkiv bookstore, the meeting needed to be relocated twice: first to Kharkiv’s Nakipelo press centre and then to Kyiv’s Izolyatsiya centre. PrideHub, a Kharkiv community center, was attacked by masked men with smoke grenades in July 2018; the building was later vandalised with graffiti and animal blood. Though complaints were made to police, and over 1,000 letters of complaint addressed to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, nobody has been punished for the offence. In March 2019 Sharyhina was amongst those organizing a Week of Women's Solidarity in Kharkiv for the first week of March: The event’s goal is to return to the original essence International Women’s Day when women unite in the struggle for their rights. This is a day of female solidarity, not bouquets and sweets. The Week of Women’s Solidarity is primarily an educational project, and we are united not against something, but for the development of women, women’s communities and the whole of Ukrainian society In January 2020 Sharyhina criticized (then) United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for visiting Ukraine without meeting LGBTQ community leaders. Sharyhina has been criticized by Ukrainian nationalists for cooperating with russian organizations like Russian LGBT Network.
9. Ihor Kostenko (1991 - 2014)
With an HPI of 28.92, Ihor Kostenko is the 9th most famous Ukrainian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.
Ihor Ihorovych Kostenko (Ukrainian: Ігор Ігорович Костенко; 31 December 1991 – 20 February 2014) was a Ukrainian journalist, student activist and Wikipedian killed during the Euromaidan events.
Pantheon has 9 people classified as social activists born between 1870 and 1991. Of these 9, 1 (11.11%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living social activists include Anna Sharyhina. The most famous deceased social activists include Simon Wiesenthal, Fanny Kaplan, and Georgy Gapon.
Living Social Activists
Go to all RankingsDeceased Social Activists
Go to all Rankings
Simon Wiesenthal
1908 - 2005
HPI: 69.41
Fanny Kaplan
1890 - 1918
HPI: 64.74
Georgy Gapon
1870 - 1906
HPI: 61.30
Alexander Pechersky
1909 - 1990
HPI: 59.02
Sergei Kovalev
1930 - 2021
HPI: 56.48
David Riazanov
1870 - 1938
HPI: 54.34
Olga Lepeshinskaya
1916 - 2008
HPI: 46.67
Ihor Kostenko
1991 - 2014
HPI: 28.92
Which Social Activists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 8 most globally memorable Social Activists since 1700.
