Levynsky, Stepan

Levynsky, Stepan [Левинський, Степан; Levyns'kyj], b 1897 in Lviv, d 8 October 1946 in Gap, France. Civic figure, engineer, and Orientalist; the son of Ivan Levynsky. He studied at the Lviv Higher Polytechnical School and the Brussels Colonial Institute and received doctoral degrees from the Polytechnical School and National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. From 1936 to 1940 he worked in the economics section of the Polish consulate in Harbin, Manchuria, and was active in the Ukrainian community there, by contributing to Man’dzhurs’kyi vistnyk and helping compile a Ukrainian-Japanese dictionary. He then studied in Beijing (1940–1) and was an official Japanese translator for the French government of Indochina in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City; 1942–5). He translated Japanese literature into Ukrainian and published many accounts of his extensive travels, including Vid Vezuviia do piskiv Sahary (From Vesuvius to the Sands of the Sahara), Z iapons'koho domu (From a Japanese Home, 1932), and Skhid i Zakhid (East and West, 1934).

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