Oleksii Kyrylovych Alchevskyi
Олексій Кирилович Алчевський
Born	1835 (1835) Sumy, Sloboda Ukraine, Russian Empire
Died	1901 (aged 65–66) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Occupations	Entrepreneur, philanthropist

Oleksii Kyrylovych Alchevskyi (Ukrainian: Олексій Кирилович Алчевський, romanized: Oleksii Kyrylovych Alchevskyi; Russian: Алексей Кириллович Алчевский; 1835, Sumy, Sloboda Ukraine, Russian Empire – 1901, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) was a Ukrainian philanthropist and industrialist. He established the first financial group in Imperial Russia and created several banks and industrial societies in Sloboda Ukraine. His role in the development of Russian industry was so important that in 1903 the Iur'evka station of the Ekaterinoslav Railway [ru] was renamed to Alchevsk in his honor, later developing into a buoyant town.

Born in Sumy, Kharkov Governorate (Sloboda Ukraine) in a family of small grocery merchant of Cossacks ancestry^[1], Alchevskyi graduated from the Sumy County School and in 1862 moved to Kharkiv. During his young age, he was interested in left populist ideas, the poetry of Taras Shevchenko^[2], and belonged to the Hromada movement^[3]. While keeping own tea store, Alchevskyi continued self-education.

During the so-called banking fever in Russia at the end of 1860s and beginning of 1870s, Alchevskyi became initiator in creating the Kharkiv Mutual Society (1866). Later in 1868, as a merchant of the 2nd Guild, he became one of the founders of the Kharkiv Trade Bank with principal capital of 500,000 rubles, becoming the third commerce bank in Russia after the Saint Petersburg Private Commerce Bank and the Moscow Merchant Bank. In 1871 Alchevskyi, as a merchant of the 1st Guild, became one of founders (along with Ivan Vernadskyi, the father of Volodymyr Vernadskyi) of the first mortgage lending bank in the country, the Kharkiv Land Bank, with principal capital of 1,000,000 rubles. Alchevskyi was the chairman of the bank until his death in 1901.

In 1879 Alchevsky established the Alekseyevskoye Mining Society (principal capital 2,000,000 rubles) that possessed the richest deposits of anthracite coal in Slavyanoserbsk uezd. In 1900 the company extracted some 45 million poods of coal, becoming the third company in the Donbas region by volume of extracted coal. Alchevskyi also initiated the construction of the metallurgical factories of the Donets-Yuryevka Metallurgical Society (1895, principal capital 8 million rubles) near train station Yuryevka (today Komunarsk train station in Alchevsk, Alchevsk Metallurgical Complex)^[4] and the Russian Providence Society near Mariupol (today part of Illich Steel and Iron Works). By 1900 his fortune neared 30 million rubles.

In 1899 along with his wife Khrystyna Zhuravlyova he built the first monument to Taras Shevchenko, however due to the anti-Ukrainian Russian policy the monument-bust was established at a backyard of their personal mansion (built by Oleksii Beketov) in Kharkiv. The monument was made out of white marble by the Russian sculptor Vladimir Beklemishev. After the death of Oleksii Alchevskyi the mansion was sold and the monument removed by authorities, eventually ending up in the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv.^[5]

According to his wife, Oleksii Alchevskyi was a ‘fanatical Ukrainian’ who invested large sums of money in the Ukrainian movement^[6].

Churches, hospitals, libraries, and Sunday schools were built in Sumy at his expense.

After failing to obtain financial help from the Ministry of Finance during the 1899-1902 economic crisis, Alchevskyi jumped under a train on 20 May 1901 at the Tsarskoselsky railway station in Saint Petersburg.

Alchevskyi was married to an educator and pedagogue Khrystyna Zhuravlyova^[7]. They had six children.^{[citation needed][8]}

• Hryhorii Alchevskyi, a composer
• Khrystia Alchevska
• Ivan Alchevskyi
• Anna Alchevska
• Dmytro Alchevskyi, a victim of Red Terror in Crimea
• Mykola Alchevskyi

On petition of workers, in 1903 the Yuryevka train station and the workers settlement next to it were renamed into the city of Alchevsk^[9]. There are monuments to him in the main square of Alchevsk city^[10] as well as in Kharkiv^[11].

In 2005, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a hryvnia coin from the series “Outstanding Personalities of Ukraine,” dedicated to the 170th anniversary of Alchevskyi's birth^[12].

There is a street named after Oleksii Alchevskyi in the city of Kamianske.

On 19 April 2023, one of the streets in the city of Kramatorsk was renamed after the Alchevskyi family^[13].

• Oleksii Alchevsky at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
• Alchevskyi Family Papers at The Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (HURI)