Svit, Ivan

Svit, Ivan or Sweet, John [Світ, Іван], b 27 April 1897 in Starobilsk county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 8 March 1989 in Seattle, USA. Journalist and community leader; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1984. In 1918 he made his way to the Far East (Zelenyi Klyn). From there he fled from Soviet rule to Harbin, Manchuria, where he was assistant editor of the Russian newspaper Kommercheskii telegraf (1925–9), published and edited the Ukrainian Man'dzhurs'kyi vistnyk (1932–7), and contributed articles on Ukrainian life in the Far East to Dilo in Lviv and other newspapers. In 1942 he edited The Call of the Ukraine in Shanghai. As a postwar refugee in the United States of America from 1951, he contributed to Svoboda and other Ukrainian periodicals. Svit wrote several works in Russian, Ukrainian, and Japanese on Ukrainian life in China and the Far East, including Ukrainskii dal'nii vostok (The Ukrainian Far East, 1934), Zelena Ukraïna (Green Ukraine, 1949), and Ukraïns'ko-iapons'ki vzaiemyny, 1903–1945 (Ukrainian-Japanese Relations, 1903–45, 1973).

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