Evgeny (Heinrich) Frantsevich Vitachek (29 April 1880 – 16 February 1946) was a Russian and Soviet violin maker. He was born into a family of hereditary violin makers in Sklenarice, Czechia. In 1885 he moved to Kyiv, where he worked and trained in the workshop of his uncle, Frantisek Spidlen. He moved to Moscow in 1898, became a subject of the Russian Empire in 1900, and was baptised into Orthodox Christianity, receiving the name Evgeny.
Vitachek made violins independently from 1889 to 1905, then returned to work in Spidlen's workshop. When Spidlen left for Czechia in 1909, Vitachek became the workshop's owner. In 1907 he developed his own violin model, which he subsequently refined repeatedly. His instruments drew on Czech traditions as well as Italian, German and Austrian experience.
At the 1913 All-Russian competition organised by the Society of Friends of Music, Vitachek received a medal and two prizes. Violinists Bronislav Sidor, Jan Kubelik and Eugène Ysaÿe played his instruments. In 1926 he won first prizes for a violin and a viola at the First All-Russian exhibition and competition of bowed musical instruments. He received the title Honoured Master of the Republic in 1924 and was named an Honoured Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1932.
In 1918 Vitachek helped organise the First State School of Violin Makers and taught there. The following year he was among the organisers of the State Collection of Antique Bowed Instruments and remained its curator for the rest of his life. From 1924 to 1931 he belonged to the instrument studies section of the State Institute of Musical Science. Between 1927 and 1934, he contributed articles on musical instruments to the 26-volume Technical Encyclopaedia edited by Leonid Martens.
From 1930 Vitachek headed the experimental laboratory of bowed instruments. In 1932 he became artistic director of the bowed-instrument workshop at the Moscow Conservatory, where he taught a course on bowed-string instruments. In 1936 he was among the organisers and directors of a bowed-instrument workshop under the All-Union Committee for Public Education. His Moscow workshop was at 1 Bolshaya Polyanka Street, and he made more than 400 instruments during his lifetime.
Vitachek was married to the violinist and teacher Elizaveta Vitachek-Gnesina, one of the Gnesin sisters. Their son, Fabi Vitachek, became a composer and teacher. Vitachek died in Moscow on 16 February 1946 and was buried at Vvedenskoye Cemetery. A monument to him stands in Czechia, and the restoration and production workshop of the Moscow Conservatory bears his name. In 1954, the Czech writer M. Kotyatkova published the novel The Violin Maker Went East, devoted to his life and work.