Tudor, Stepan

(pen name of S. I. Oleksiuk). Born Aug. 13 (25), 1892, in the village of Ponykva, in what is now Brody Raion, L’vov Oblast; died June 22, 1941, in L’vov. Soviet Ukrainian writer. Doctor of philosophy (1932).

Tudor was mobilized into the Austro-Hungárian Army in 1914 and surrendered to the Russians in 1915; he fought in the Civil War in the Ukraine and returned to Galicia in 1923. Tudor graduated from L’vov University in 1926 and first published his works in 1925. He was leader of the literary association Horno.

Tudor’s short stories, novellas, and poems are permeated with the spirit of revolutionary struggle and portray the heroic image of the communist revolutionary. Notable examples include the short-story collection Birth (1929) and the novellas Mariia (1928) and Milk Madness (1930). In his works of literary criticism and sociopolitical journalism, Tudor advocated the Leninist principle of party-oriented literature and denounced fascism and Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.

After the liberation of the Western Ukraine, Tudor was a deputy to the People’s Assembly. In 1940 he became a docent at L’vov University and director of the L’vov branch of the Institute of Ukrainian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1941, Tudor completed the second volume of his philosophical anticlerical novel The Day of Father Soika (1932–41, published 1947–49). He was killed during the bombing of L’vov.