2 Hryvni Panteleimon Kulish

Panteleimon Kulish (1819–1897) was one of the more contradictory figures in nineteenth-century Ukrainian intellectual life — a founding force in modern Ukrainian literature and the inventor of the kulishivka orthographic system, yet a man whose political positions shifted enough to earn him lasting suspicion from both Russian imperial authorities and fellow Ukrainian nationalists. This coin marks the bicentennial of his birth.

The kulishivka script he devised in the 1850s was later banned by the Ems Decree of 1876, which prohibited Ukrainian-language publishing across the Russian Empire entirely.