Rights Information

Komora Publishing House

editor.komorabooks@gmail.com

Contact of the Ukrainian Book Institute: ubi@ubi.org.ua

Author Biography

Viktor Petrov (1894–1964, pen names V. Domontovych and Viktor Ber) was a Ukrainian writer, philosopher, social anthropologist, literary critic, archeologist, historian, and cultural scientist, who held a PhD in history and philology. Together with Valerian Pidmohylny, Petrov was the founder of the Ukrainian intellectual novel as a genre, as well as of the novelised biography. After completing his studies in the department of history and philology at Kyiv University, he joined the Ethnographic Commission of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences as its leader. During this period, he became acquainted with the most well-known Ukrainian modernist poets, the Neoclassicists, and debuted as an author in 1928 with the novel The Girl with the Teddy Bear. During WWII he lived in Kharkiv, then moved to Germany. There he became one of the founders of the organisation of Ukrainian writers in German emigration, the Ukrainian Art Movement, and taught ethnography in the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. Petrov died in 1969 and was buried in the military section of the capital’s cemetery with general’s honors. Up until Ukraine’s independence, Petrov’s name remained virtually unresearched by Ukrainian literary scholars and unknown to readers.