The Kharkiv Democritus was a Ukrainian magazine, published in six monthly issues in Kharkiv (in present-day Ukraine, at that time part of the Russian Empire) between January and June 1816. Its publisher and editor, Vasilii Maslovich (1793−1841), took the Saint Petersburg magazine Democritus (1815) as a model for the publication. TheKharkiv Democritus was the first Ukrainian periodical of a comical and satirical nature. The magazine’s circle of authors included Kharkiv writers Y.M. Nakhimov, H.F. Kvitka-Osnov'ianenko, D. Iaroslavskii, and O.M. Somov. Materials were grouped in three sections, poetry, prose, and “mixed,” and published in Russian. The magazine also included content in Ukrainian, such as Maslovich’s burlesque poem “Foundation of Kharkiv,” which for the first time introduced the Ukrainian language into a periodical published in eastern Ukraine. References to social injustice that appeared on the pages of the magazine were disapproved by the censors. The magazine ceased publication when Maslovich moved to Saint Petersburg.