Yefremov, Petro

Yefremov, Petro [Єфремов, Петро; Jefremov], b 24 December 1883 in Palchyk, Zvenyhorodka county, Kyiv gubernia, d ? Literary scholar; brother of Serhii Yefremov. In the 1920s he was a professor of Ukrainian literature at the Dnipropetrovsk Institute of People's Education, a member of the Dnipropetrovsk Scientific Society of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN), and the first editor of the journal Zoria (Dnipropetrovsk). From 1905 he contributed to the journals Kievskaia starina, Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk, Svitlo (Kyiv), Knyhar, and Zoria; the newspapers Rada (Kyiv) and Nova rada (Kyiv), the almanac Sich, and the literary and artistic collection Vyr revoliutsiï (The Vortex of Revolution, 1921). He explored the problems of naturalism and studied the development of the historical novel in Ukrainian literature. He wrote articles about the works of Taras Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Ivan Karpenko-Kary, Dmytro Markovych, Liubov Yanovska, Bohdan Lepky, Petro Karmansky, Ahatanhel Krymsky, and many others. He was arrested in 1929 and sentenced at the 1930 show trial of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. Having served his sentence, he was rearrested in 1937. His further fate is unknown. He was rehabilitated in 1989.

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