Raffalovich, George

Raffalovich, George (pseudonym: Bedwin Sands), b 10 December 1880 in Cannes, France, d 17 May 1958 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Journalist and novelist. Ancestors on his father’s side were Jews from Ukraine. A British citizen from 1906, he lived in London. He was honorary secretary of the so-called Ukraine Committee (1913–14); wrote over a dozen articles on the Ukrainian question for English journals (eg, The New Age, Outlook, Contemporary Review, and The Commentator) and the book The Ukraine: Reprint of a Lecture Delivered on Ukrainian History and Present-Day Political Problems (1914); translated and published a long article by Mykhailo Hrushevsky as The Historical Evolution of the Ukrainian Problem (1915); and edited the collection The Russians in Galicia, which were published by the Ukrainian National Council in New York in 1916. The best-informed observer of Ukrainian affairs in Great Britain in his day, he did much to try to influence British public opinion and gain support for the Ukrainian independence movement. After being accused of pro-German sympathies, he was forced to leave Great Britain. He moved to the United States, where he taught French and Slavic history at several universities. An account of his life and a bibliography of his writings by O. Kravcheniuk was published in Suchasnist’ (1963, no. 9).

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