Luzhnytsky, Hryhorii

Luzhnytsky, Hryhorii [Лужницький, Григорій; Lužnyc’kyj, Hryhorij] (Luznycky, Hryhor or Gregory; pseuds: L. Nyhrytsky, Meriiam, B. Polianych), b 27 August 1903 in Lviv, d 3 March 1990 in Philadelphia. Writer, journalist, and literary scholar and critic; member of the AN URSR Lviv branch in 1939–41; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1952 and the Free Czecho-Slovak Academy of Arts and Sciences. Luzhnytsky studied Slavic culture at the University of Graz and received his PH D from the University of Vienna in 1926. He was a member of several faculties, at Lviv University (1939–41), Graz University (1945–50), and Pennsylvania University (1959–68), where he was a visiting professor. He was a literary consultant for the Lviv Ukrainian Drama Theater (1939–44) and the literature editor for Ukrainska Presa publishers (until 1939).

From 1959 he worked in the editorial office of the newspaper Ameryka (Philadelphia). In addition to numerous articles on historical and cultural themes he wrote several novels, plays, and sketches. His scholarly works include Ukraïns’ka Tserkva mizh Skhodom i Zakhodom (Ukrainian Church between East and West, 1954), Ukrainian Literature within the Framework of World Literature (1961), and Persecution and Destruction of the Ukrainian Church by the Russian Bolsheviks (1964). He is the coauthor of The Quest for an Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate (1971) and coauthor and editor of P'iatdesiat rokiv ukraïns’koho teatru (Fifty Years of the Ukrainian Theater, 1975). An issue of Terem (9 [1984]) was dedicated to Luzhnytsky. A festschrift in his honor, edited by Vasyl Yashchun and Wolodymyr Zyla, was published in Toronto in 1996.

Danylo Husar Struk

[This article was updated in 2001.]