The Ruthenian Trinity (Ruthenian: Руська троица; Ukrainian: Руська трійця, romanized: Ruska triitsia) was a Galician literary group led by Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatskyi, and Ivan Vahylevych, which began a national and cultural revival in the western Ukrainian lands in the late 1820s (1833–1837).
[5] The three all first met as students at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv.
Their third collection, Rusalka Dnistrovaia ("Mermaid of the Dniester"), was published in 1836 in Budapest.
[6] In 1834, the Ruthenian Triad attempted to publish a folklore and literary collection, Zora, in which folk songs, works by members of the group, and materials condemning foreign oppression and glorifying the heroic struggle of Ukrainians for their liberation were to be published.
However, censorship banned its publication, and the compilers of the collection were closely monitored by the police.
[7] A significant merit of the Ruthenian Triad was the publication of the almanac Rusalka Dnistrovaia (Budyn, now Budapest, 1837, which, instead of Iazychie, introduced a living vernacular in Galicia, starting a new Ukrainian literature there).
The idea of Slavic reciprocity permeated by the Dniester Mermaid is related to Kollar's poem Slavy dcera (1824), which greatly inspired the activities of the Ruthenian Triad.
[8] The Ruthenian Triad group ceased its activities in 1843 after the death of Shashkevych.