Natalia Ivanovna Kobrynskaia

Born June 8, 1855, in Belelui, in present-day Sniatyn Raion, Ivano-Frankovsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR; died Jan. 22, 1920, in the city of Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankovsk). Ukrainian writer; initiator and organizer of the women’s movement in Galicia.

In 1884, Kobrynskaia organized the Association of Russian Women in the city of Stanislav. She published the almanac First Garland with the assistance of I. Franko and O. Pchilka in 1887. From 1893 to 1896, Kobrynskaia published three almanacs under the title Our Fate. The almanacs contained works written by women authors. Kobrynskaia depicted the difficult life of the Galician Ukrainian village, condemned the class caste system, and the narrow-minded upbringing of women and created original, realistic characters in her best stories, including “For the Sake of a Piece of Bread” (1884), “The Spirit of the Times” (1887), and “The Elector” (1889), and the novella Iadzia and Katrusia (1890). In 1914 she came out against the imperialist war.