Heorhiy Halenchanka

Heorhij Yakaŭlevič Halenčanka or Georgy Yakovlevich Golenchenko (; 28 February 1937 – 9 March 2026) was a Belarusian historian, medievalist, bibliologist, and expert in Skaryna studies. He was a Doctor of Historical Sciences.

Life and career Heorhij Halenchanka was born in Petrozavodsk on 28 February 1937, in a Ukrainian-Jewish family, but spent most of his childhood in Minsk.

Halenčanka graduated from the Faculty of History of the Belarusian State University (BSU) in 1960. From 1960 to 1962, he worked as a librarian at the State Library of the BSSR.

In 1965, he completed his postgraduate studies at the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives.

From 1965 to 1968, he worked as a senior lecturer at the Belarusian State University.

Scientific activity His research interests focused on the history of Belarusian book printing in the 16–18th centuries.

He was the author of studies on the Little Travelller's Book by Francysk Skaryna. He is one of the authors of the popular science book "Francysk Skaryna", published by UNESCO (Paris, 1979–1980; in French and English). He compiled the section "Old Printed Cyrillic Editions of the 16th–18th Centuries" in the catalog "The Book of Belarus. 1517–1917" (1986) and the facsimile edition of Skaryna's "Bible" (1990–1991, in 3 volumes). He is the author of the books "Ideological and Cultural Connections of East Slavic Peoples in the 16th – Mid-17th Century" (1989) and "Francysk Skaryna – Belarusian and East Slavic First Printer" (1993).

Selected works

Awards State Prize of the Republic of Belarus (1994, as part of a collective) – for the cycle of works "Skaryna and Belarusian Culture".