Balei, Stepan

Balei, Stepan or Stefan Baley [Балей, Степан; Balej], b 4 February 1885 in Velyki Borky, Ternopil county, Galicia, d 13 September 1952 in Warsaw. Pedagogue, psychologist, and neurologist, full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Polish №Academy of Sciences. Balei studied at Lviv University and at the universities of Berlin, Vienna, and Paris. From 1908 he taught, with interruptions, in the Academic Gymnasium in Lviv. In 1913 he received his PhD in psychology. In 1922–5 he was professor of philosophy and psychology at the Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian University. Balei contributed many articles to Ukrainian scholarly journals. His major early works include Z psykholohiï tvorchosty Shevchenka (On the Psychology of Taras Shevchenko’s Creativity, 1916); Narys psykholohiï (An Outline of Psychology, 1922), the first Ukrainian textbook in psychology published in Galicia; and Narys lohiky (An Outline of Logic, 1923). Receiving his medical degree in 1926 and becoming a professor of educational psychology at Warsaw University in 1927, Balei turned to studying non-Ukrainian subjects. His main works after 1927 were Zarys psychologii w związku z rozwojem psychiki dziecka (An Outline of Psychology in Relation to Children’s Psychological Development, 1933); Psychologia wieku dojrzewania (The Psychology of Adolescence , 1935); Psychologia wychowawcza (Educational Psychology, 1938); and Drogi samopoznania (The Paths to Self-discovery, 1946).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]