Vershigora, Petr

Vershigora, Petr [Вершигора, Пётр; Veršigora, Pjotr], b 16 May 1905 in Severynivka, near Rybnica, Bessarabia, d 27 March 1963 in Moscow. Soviet actor, military figure, and writer. He graduated from the Odesa Conservatory (1930) and worked as an actor. He became a director at the Kyiv Artistic Film Studio in 1939. During the Second World War he was a Soviet partisan commander with the rank of major-general (see Soviet partisans in Ukraine, 1941–5). He wrote three books of memoirs about Sydir Kovpak’s partisan forces in Western Ukraine.

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