Franko, Petro

Franko, Petro [Франко, Петро], b 21 June 1890 in the village of Nahuievychi, Drohobych county, Galicia, d 1941. Writer and pedagogue; son of Ivan Franko, brother of Taras Franko. A graduate of the Lviv Polytechnical Institute, Franko was one of the organizers of the Plast Ukrainian Youth Association. In 1914 he joined the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, in which he later commanded a company; as a captain in the Ukrainian Galician Army he organized an air-force squadron in 1919. After the First World War Franko was a teacher in Kolomyia; from 1927 to 1936 he worked as an engineer in Soviet Ukraine. After his return to Galicia he began to teach at the Lviv Trade and Economics Institute in 1939; in 1940 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. Franko was the author of short stories, a film script based on I. Franko’s novel Boryslav smiiet'sia (Boryslav Is Laughing), translations of the works of Jack London, and a memoir about his father, Ivan Franko zblyz'ka (Ivan Franko from Close Up, 1937). With the outbreak of the Soviet-German War he was evacuated from Galicia by the Soviets and died in unknown circumstances.

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