Viktor Kytasty (1943-2000)

Viktor Kytasty (1943-2000). American professor, musician, cultural anthropologist, and social activist. He emigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1949. A professional musician who performed on the bandura (a stringed instrument considered the national musical instrument of Ukraine), Kytasty taught comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. Together with his father, Hryhoriy Kytasty (1907-84), director of the famed Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of Detroit, he organized the Ukrainian Bandura Society, as well as numerous schools and camps for teaching this instrument in North America. In 1990 he returned to Ukraine and lived and worked in Kyiv, where he was the first director of America House and the founder of the America House Library. Kytasty was born in Nemyriv in Vinnytsia oblast in west-central Ukraine.