Semen Solomonovych Yushkevich was a prose writer, dramatist, and theatrical figure whom contemporaries called “the singer of the Jewish underclass” and “a colorful writer of the Russian South.”
Early YearsHe was born on 7 December 1868 in Odesa to a wealthy family of Solomon Moiseyevich and Anna Grigoryevna Yushkevich. Semen studied at a primary Jewish school and later at the Second Odesa Gymnasium, from which he was expelled. He continued his education at home, apprenticed with a pharmacist, and passed the exam to become a pharmacist’s assistant.
He married Polina Finkelshtein at age of 17, but was soon widowed and left to raise their son Pavlo. After a throat operation, he abandoned a prospective career as an opera singer. He began publishing in the newspaper Odeskyi Listok in the late 1880s.
Education and Literary CareerIn 1902 he graduated from the medical faculty of the Sorbonne. Earlier, while still in Odesa, he married again — to Anastasiia Zeilinger — and moved to Paris. He had been engaged in literary work since the 1890s.
From the 1900s onward he collaborated with the publishing society Znanie, where his novella “The Jews” (1904), the drama “The King” (1906), and his first five-volume collected works (1903–1908) were published. Between 1903 and 1922, he released 15 plays and comedies, among them: “Hunger” (1905), “In the City” (1906), “Miserere” (1910), “The Comedy of Marriage” (1911), “The Air Man” (1915), and “Clouds” (1922).
His play “The Tale of Mr. Sonkin” (1916) was staged in Odesa, with Leonid Utyosov in the leading role.
Yushkevich’s works are characterized by realism and depictions of everyday life. A complete 14-volume edition of his writings was published in Petrograd between 1914 and 1918.

Yevgeny Chirikov and Semen Yushkevich, circa 1900