Kapelhorodsky, Pylyp

Kapelhorodsky, Pylyp [Капельгородський, Пилип; Kapel'horods'kyj], b 26 November 1882 in Horodyshche, Lebedyn county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 21 February 1942. Writer and journalist. A student at the theological seminary in Poltava (1897–1902), he was persecuted for his revolutionary activity by the tsarist authorities. From 1904 he lived in the Kuban and worked as a teacher and journalist. After the Revolution of 1917 he returned to Ukraine. In the 1920s he worked for newspapers in Lubny and Poltava and belonged to the peasant writers’ organization Pluh. His first poems were published in the 1905 almanac Persha lastivka. In 1907 his book Ukraïntsi na Kubani (Ukrainians in the Kuban) and the poetry collection Vidhuky zhyttia (Echoes of Life) appeared. In the late 1920s he published three short collections of satirical and humorous prose and the novella Neporozuminnia (Misunderstanding, 1928). His novel-chronicle about the revolution in the Kuban, Shurhan, appeared in 1932. Kapelhorodsky was repressed in 1938 during the Yezhov terror and rehabilitated after Joseph Stalin’s death. A collection of his works was published in Kyiv in 1961.

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