Viktor Petrov

Viktor Petrov (Ukrainian: Віктор Петров 1894 – 1969) was a prominent Soviet Ukrainian existentialist writer. He signed his works with pen names V. Domontovych (Ukrainian: В. Домонтович) and Viktor Ber (Ukrainian: Віктор Бер). Together with Valerian Pidmohylny Petrov is considered to be the founder of the Ukrainian intellectual novel. Although Petrov is remembered as a writer today, during his life he was a scientist in the first place. He wrote papers on archaeology, anthropology, history, philosophy and literature.

Biography

Viktor Petrov was born on 10 October 1894 in Yekaterinoslav (today's Dnipropetrovsk). In 1918 he graduated from historical-philological faculty of Kiev University. Later he worked at the ethnographic committee of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1930 he obtained his doctorate for a study titled "Panteleymon Kulish in the 50s. Life. Ideology. Creativity". During the World War II he was in the territory occupied by Germans where he worked in several Ukrainian magazines and newspapers.

After World War II Petrov stayed in emigration in Germany, during which he was a professor at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. He was also one of the founding members of the Ukrainian artist movement, a literary organization of the Ukrainian intellectual diaspora. At a later time Petrov disappeared from Germany under unknown circumstances. Later it was discovered (due to a reference to him in A. Mongait's survey book) that he returned to the Soviet Union and kept working at the Institute of Archaeology in Kiev. Petrov died in 1969 and is buried in Kiev.

Writings

Novels

• Without Foundation (Без ґрунту) (1942–1943)
• Girl with a Teddy Bear (Ukrainian: Дівчина з ведмедиком) (1928)
• Doctor Seraficus (Ukrainian: Доктор Серафікус) (1928–1929, published in 1947)
• Alina and Kostomarov (Ukrainian: Аліна й Костомаров) (1929)
• Kulish's romances (Ukrainian: Романи Куліша) (1930)
• Doctor Seraficus (English translation of excerpt), translated by Yuri Tkacz, in Before the Storm, Ardis Publishers USA

Scientific publications

• Origin of the Ukrainian Nation
• Scythians — language and ethnicity
• Ethnogenesis of Slavs
• [ Development of Ukrainian People]
• Ukrainian cultural activists - victims of repressions

• (Ukrainian) "Bez gruntu," the book in pdf format Archived March 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
• (Ukrainian) "Doctor Seraficus", website with the book Archived September 25, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.

Literature

• Viktor Petrov in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
• Ukrainian: Андрєєв В.М. Віктор Петров. Нариси інтелектуальної біографії вченого. - Дніпропетровськ: Герда, 2012. - 476 с.