Horetsky, Petro

Horetsky, Petro [Горецький, Петро; Horec’kyj], b 6 December 1888 in Mutyn, Krolevets county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 16 August 1972 in Kyiv. Linguist. Horetsky was an associate of the Institute of the Ukrainian Scientific Language and later of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He was active in Ukrainian lexicography in the 1920s (preparing a dictionary of pedagogic and psychological termіnology, 1928) and served as a compiler of volume four of the academy's Russian-Ukrainian dictionary (seized at the printer's before final publication). He coauthored (with Ivan Shalia) a grammar of the Ukrainian language (eight printings, 1926–9). Following his arrest (ca 1932) for alleged ‘bourgeois nationalism,’ he was demoted to the status of a proofreader. Reinstated in the Institute of Linguistics, he took part in the preparation of the 6-volume Ukrainian-Russian dictionary (1953–63) and of the 11-volume Ukrainian dictionary (1970–80). He also wrote a survey of the history of Ukrainian lexicography (Istoriia ukraïns’koï leksykohrafiï, 1963).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]