Blokhyn, Yurii

Blokhyn, Yurii [Блохин, Юрій; Bloxyn, Jurij; pseudonym Юрій Бойко; Yurii Boiko], b 25 March 1909 in Mykolaiv, d 17 May 2002 in Munich, Germany. Literary scholar, community figure, and publicist; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Blokhyn graduated from the Odesa Institute of People's Education in 1931 and completed his graduate studies in 1935 at the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Research Institute in Kharkiv. He taught Ukrainian language and literature at higher educational institutions in Kharkiv. Beginning in 1930, he published articles in the journals Zhyttia i revoliutsiia, Literaturna krytyka, Literaturnyi zhurnal, and Literaturnaia ucheba. As a postwar displaced person and émigré in West Germany, he was a professor at the Ukrainian Free University (1949–74, rector in 1965–6) and at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Between 1984 and 1988 he served as vice-president of the Ukrainian National Council. Blokhyn is the author of Taras Sevčenko, sein Leben und Werk (1965), Vybrane (Selected Works, 3 vols, 1971–81), and Gegen den Strom (1979). His Vybrani pratsi (Selected Works) appeared in Kyiv in 1992 and the proceedings of a jubilee conference in his honor was published in 1998 as Kharkiv 30–40-kh rr. XX st. (Kharkiv in the 1930s and 1940s).

[This article was updated in 2009.]