[1] His grandfather Andreas Arkas, the son of an Orthodox priest from the Greek city of Patras, was invited to teach classical languages and history at the Nikolayev Naval School in Saint Petersburg.

[citation needed] Mykola received his all-round education in the Law School of St. Petersburg and completed his studies in physics and mathematics at the University of Odessa.

[citation needed] On his Kherson estate in the villages of Khrystoforivka and Bohdanivka, Arkas set up and paid for, a Ukrainian-speaking school that closed by the government two years later.

[2] Arkas's artistic contributions include poetry, and about 80 compositions for solo-singing, vocal ensembles and arrangements of folk songs.

[citation needed] In 1908 in St. Petersburg, a book by Mykola Arkas — "History of Ukraine-Rus" — was published,[1] under the editorship of Ukrainian writer Vasyl Domaniczky.

Performances of "Kateryna" were a great success, first playing in Moscow by Mark Kropivnitskiy's troupe in 1899, and later in Minsk, Vilnius and Kiev.