2 Hryvni Volodymyr Korolenko

Volodymyr Korolenko was a Russian-born writer of Ukrainian Cossack descent who spent years in Siberian exile under the Tsarist regime for refusing to swear loyalty to Alexander III. He later became one of the most prominent voices against anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, publicly defending victims of the Beilis blood libel case in 1913. Ukraine's decision to commemorate him in 2003 was not uncontroversial — he wrote primarily in Russian and never fully embraced Ukrainian political nationalism, yet his documented defense of Ukrainian peasants and his origins made him a plausible candidate for national memory.