Kobets, Oleksii

Kobets, Oleksii [Кобець, Олексій; Kobec', Oleksij; pseudonym: Oleksa Varavva], b 29 March 1889 in Kaniv, Kyiv gubernia, d 5 September 1967 in Buffalo, New York State. Writer and journalist. During the First World War Kobets carried on cultural and educational work with Ukrainian prisoners of war at Freistadt on behalf of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked for various publishers, particularly in the co-operative press, such as the journal Nova hromada. After the Second World War he emigrated to the United States of America. Kobets is the author of several poetry collections, movie scripts, and the autobiographical prose work Zapysky polonenoho (Memoirs of a Prisoner, 1931), which won him critical acclaim at home and abroad.

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