Petro Stojan


Petro Evstaf'evic Stojan was a Ukrainian esperantist, bibliographer and lexicographer and a member of the Esperanto Language Committee from 1914.

Life and work

Stojan studied physics and mathematics at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa and in Sankt Petersburg and from 1906 to 1907 in Paris. From 1919 to 1922, he was a high school teacher in Serbia. From 1925, he worked at the Universal Esperanto Association in Geneva at its biggest work, the Bibliography of the International Language which was published in 1929.
He spent the end of his life in Southern France where he died of drowning.

Esperantist engagement

He joined the Esperanto movement in 1903. According to the Encyclopedia of Esperanto of 1933, "he was one of the most competent regarding the dictionary technique." Over sixteen years, he worked on twelve dictionaries; among them are the great Russian dictionary of the Imperial Academy. His other well-known dictionaries are the Ornithological Eight-language Dictionary and the Small Russian-Esperanto dictionary and the Illustrated Dictionary of the Russian Language. In 1929, his Bibliography of the International Language was published.
In 1913, he proposed the creation of the Universal Card Encyclopedia which, according to his idea, could be updated by adding cards for each subject.
He also wrote a great number of scientific articles and original literature in Esperanto.

Vindiania and Biosophy

In France he worked on La Vindiania, a thesis on the origin of the Indo-European languages and on a complete philosophy of life, which he named biosophy. However, his works remained in the manuscript form and circulated among his friends, and only one book was actually published in 1946 in Arras.

Constructed languages

Stojan created a number of international auxiliary languages, most of which were never published:
He possibly created these projects as fictional languages, simply for his amusement; but in his time, the concept did not exist.

Works