Kovaliv, Levko

Kovaliv, Levko [Ковалів, Левко], b 18 December 1894 in Kharkiv, d 26 October 1937 in a GULAG labor camp, RSFSR. Revolutionary figure. In 1917–18 he was a member of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries and of the Central Rada. In 1919, as a member of the Central Committee of the Borotbists; he and Hryhorii Hrynko negotiated unsuccessfully with the Comintern executive in Moscow in an effort to obtain admission of the Borotbist party into the Comintern, and in December of that year he signed the compact between the Borotbists and the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. After the dissolution of the Borotbist party in 1920, he did not join the CP(B)U. Forsaking politics altogether, he worked as a mathematician, chemist, and book illustrator. He belonged to Maik Yohansen’s Techno-Artistic Group A. Kovaliv was arrested during the Stalinist terror in 1934 and was shot in a concentration camp.

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