Petrushevych, Ivan

Petrushevych, Ivan [Петрушевич, Іван; Petruševyč], b 29 April 1875 in Yezupil, Stanyslaviv county, Galicia, d 28 July 1950 in San Mateo, California, USA. Co-operative leader. After studying the co-operative movement in England in 1905, he returned to organize Rochdale consumer co-operatives in Yezupil and other Galician towns. As secretary of Narodna Torhovlia he prepared a plan to reorganize it into a union of consumer co-operatives. He wrote articles on the theory and practice of co-operation for the weekly Ekonomist and on Ukrainian issues for the London journal East European Review. His translations of French, English, and American literary works appeared in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk or were published separately by the Ukrainian-Ruthenian Publishing Company. After emigrating to Canada in 1913, he organized the Ruthenian Farmers’ Elevator Company and edited the paper Kanadiis’kyi rusyn. He was sent by the Ukrainian Canadian Citizens’ League to the Paris Peace Conference in 1918 and became a member of Louis Botha’s commission in 1919. Then he served in London as secretary of the delegation from the Government-in-exile of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (1920–3) (see the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic). In the mid-1920s he moved to the United States of America and settled in California, where using the pseudonym Pedro Savidge he wrote film scripts for Hollywood and the novel Flying Submarine. In 1945 he was invited to act as adviser to the delegation of Ukrainian Canadians and Americans to the United Nations Conference in San Francisco.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]