Voropai, Oleksa

Voropai, Oleksa [Воропай, Олекса; Voropaj], b 9 November 1913 in Odesa, d 20 July 1989 in Leeds, England. Ethnographer and writer; member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences. A graduate in agronomy (1940), he emigrated to England after the Second World War and obtained doctoral degrees in Slavic ethnology (1957) and biology (1961) at the University of London. He published collections of Ukrainian folk songs (1952), Ukrainian folk riddles (1955), and calendric folk rituals—Zvychaï nashoho narodu (The Customs of Our People, 2 vols, 1958, 1966). He wrote four books of recollections, beginning with V dev’iatim kruzi (1953; trans: The Ninth Circle, 1954), which deals with the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]