Polish independence, while preparing the members for their role in the planned all-national uprising. Due to his involvement, Antonowicz became one of the prominent examples of the "peasant-lovers" (or "Reds"), a loose group of young artists and liberal thinkers fascinated with the peasantry as the "core of the nation". However, when the January Uprising finally started, the Society divided. Antonowicz, highly critical of the bourgeoisie and the szlachta, sided with the lower classes and left the society, instead forming a Ukrainian society called the Kyiv Community (Київська громада). The conflict between Antonowicz and his university colleagues was further aggravated by the conflict over the Polish language. While most democratic societies decided to appeal to the tsar and ask for the Polish language to be promoted to the status of language of instruction, Antonowicz ultimately opposed those plans. This conflict further strengthened Antonowicz's pro-Ukrainian stance on one side, and the animosity between him and his colleagues on the other, to the extent that he was considered a "renegade" by some. In 1861 he changed his name to its Ukrainized form and converted to the Orthodox faith, common among the peasants living around Kyiv, as opposed to the Catholicism of the higher class of local society He also married Varvara Ivanovna Mikhels, and started to teach Latin in the 1st Kyiv Gymnasium. During that time, Antonovych was under investigation for traveling with Tadei Rylskyi around Ukrainian villages. Career In July 1863, Antonovych was appointed as a chancellery official to the Governor General of the Southwestern Krai, with an official designation to the Provisional Commission for Review of Ancient Acts (now the Russian Archaeographic Commission). In April 1864, he became its chief editor and held this role until 1880. During his work in the commission, Antonovych edited and published nine volumes of his "Archives of South-Western Russia", a compendium of the history of Right-bank Ukraine during the 16th-18th centuries. In 1871, he participated in the 2nd Archaeological Congress in Saint Petersburg, he also had role in preparing and conducting the 3rd (1874) and the 9th (1899) archaeological congresses in Kyiv where he made 36 reports. In 1880, Antonovych participated in the Archaeological Congress in Lisbon (so-called the 9th International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology, predecessor of IUAES). In 1897, together with the Ukrainian nobleman Oleksandr Konysky, he established the All-Ukrainian Public Organization. Personal views Throughout his career, the imperial censors and oppressive