Olha Kobyljanska

Olha Yulianivna Kobylianska was a Ukrainian modernist writer, nationalist and feminist. A daughter of a Ukrainian nobleman and a Polonized German mother, Kobylianska was mainly self-educated, receiving only four years of formal schooling in the German language. She wrote her first works in German, beginning in 1880. Besides her fluency in German, she learned to speak in both the Ukrainian and Polish languages. In 1898, she published a pioneering treatment of same-sex love, based partly on her own lesbian experiences. Following the annexation of Bukovina to Soviet Ukraine, Kobylianska adopted Soviet citizenship, which resulted in her persecution following the return of Romanian authorities.