Alchevska, Khrystia

Alchevska, Khrystia [Алчевсъка, Христя; Alčevs’ka, Xrystja], b 16 March 1882 in Kharkiv, d 27 October 1931. Poet, translator, and teacher, daughter of Oleksii Alchevsky and Khrystyna Alchevska. Alchevska completed her higher education in Paris in 1903 and taught French at the Kharkiv women's gymnasium. During the 1920s she was a member of the Ukrainian Society of Playwrights and Composers. She began her literary career in 1903 and published poems in the newspaper Ridnyi krai, in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk, and in Ukraïns’ka khata. Alchevska was accused of nationalism by Soviet critics for her collections of lyric poetry with patriotic themes—Tuha za sontsem (Longing for the Sun, 1907), Sontse z-za khmar (Sun from behind the Clouds, 1910), Vyshnevyi tsvit (Cherry Blossoms, 1912), Pisni sertsia i prostoriv (Songs of the Heart and Open Spaces, 1914), and Probudzhennia (Awakening, 1917)—and for the dramatic poem Luiza Michel (1930). She translated works by Pierre-Jean Béranger, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, and Leo Tolstoy.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]