Maifet, Hryhorii

Maifet, Hryhorii [Майфет, Григорій; Majfet, Hryhorij], b 1 August 1903 in Romny, Poltava gubernia, d 13 September 1975 in Kanin, near Pechora, RSFSR. Literary scholar and literary critic. He graduated from the Poltava Institute of People's Education in 1924 and completed postgraduate studies at the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Research Institute in Kharkiv. From 1931 to 1934 he taught Western European literary history at the Poltava Pedagogical Institute. He was arrested in 1934 and was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in concentration camps. He was released in 1946 and was ordered to settle in Kanin in the Soviet Arctic. Maifet was fluent in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. From 1925 to the time of his arrest he published over 100 articles dealing with the development of Ukrainian literature and Western literatures and with translations of the works of Taras Shevchenko into other languages. Among his works were a book on the poetry of Pavlo Tychyna Materiialy do kharakterystyky tvorchosty P.H. Tychyny (Materials for the Characterization of the Work of P.H. Tychyna, 1926) and such scholarly monographs as Pryroda noveli: Zbirka persha (The Nature of the Novella: First Collection, 1928), Pryroda noveli: Zbirka druha (The Nature of the Novella: Second Collection, 1929), ‘Meni odnakovo’ ta ioho vidtvorennia v anhliis’komu i nimets'komu perekladakh ([Shevchenko’s] ‘Meni Odnakovo’ and Its Rendering in English and German Translations, 1929).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]