Viktor Petrov


Viktor Petrov was a prominent Ukrainian existentialist writer. He signed his works with pen names V. Domontovych and Viktor Ber. 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. 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 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 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