2 Hryvni Mykola Kostomarov

Kostomarov spent years under close surveillance by the tsarist secret police following his arrest in 1847 as a founding member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a Ukrainian intellectual circle that advocated Slavic federalism and the abolition of serfdom. He was exiled to Saratov for a decade, barred from publishing, and prohibited from returning to Ukraine. His historical scholarship — particularly his argument that Ukrainians constituted a distinct people from Russians — made him politically radioactive to St. Petersburg for most of his working life. This coin was issued on the 200th anniversary of his birth.