Solovei, Dmytro

Solovei, Dmytro [Соловей, Дмитро; Solovej], b 4 November 1888 in Sribne, Pryluky county, Poltava gubernia, d 9 July 1966 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Historian, statistician, pedagogue, and publicist; member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States; father of Oksana Solovei. He entered Kharkiv University in 1910, but was suspended in 1914 for organizing a commemoration of Taras Shevchenko and then exiled to Poltava. In 1920 he was arrested by Soviet security forces and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted, and he was allowed to move to Kharkiv to work as a statistician for a government bulletin. In 1936 he undertook graduate studies at the Scientific Research Institute of the History of Ukrainian Culture and established himself there as a research associate. In 1943 he moved to Lviv; subsequently he emigrated to the West. He eventually settled in the United States of America.

Many of Solovei’s writings dealt with political issues after the Second World War, and he served as an associate of the Institute for the Study of the USSR. His works include Holhota Ukraïny (The Golgotha of Ukraine, 1953), Ukraïns'ke selo v rokakh 1931–1933 (The Ukrainian Village in 1931–3, 1955), Ukraïna v systemi soviets'koho koloniializmu (Ukraine in the Soviet Colonial System, 1959), Holod u systemi koloniial'noho panuvannia v Ukraïni (Famine in the System of Colonial Domination in Ukraine, 1959–60), Polityka TsK KPRS u plianuvanni rozvytku promyslovosty ta promyslovykh kadriv na Ukraïni (The Policies of the CC of the CPSU for Developing Industry and Industrial Cadres in Ukraine, 1960), Ukraïns'ka nauka v koloniial'nykh putakh (Ukrainian Scholarship in Colonial Chains, 1963), and Rozhrom Poltavy (The Destruction of Poltava, 1974).

Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]