Irina Vilde

(pseudonym of Dar’ia Dmitrievna Polotniuk). Born May 5, 1907, in Chernovtsy. Soviet Ukrainian writer.

Irina Vil’de is the daughter of the Ukrainian writer and educator D. Makogon. She graduated from the University of L’vov in 1932. From 1930 to 1939 she published stories and novellas about the life of the western Ukrainian intelligentsia, petite bourgeoisie, and students. After the reunification of the western Ukrainian lands with the Ukrainian SSR she continued to develop in new ways the familiar themes of the family in bourgeois society, for example, in the novel Grown Children, (1939). Vil’de’s best work, the novel The Richinskii Sisters (parts 1-3, 1958-60), was awarded the T. G. Shevchenko Literary Prize in 1965). The novel presents a multilevel panorama of life in Galicia in the years of the Polish occupation and of the struggle of progressive forces against social and national oppression and against fascism. Vil’de has been awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.