Together with Valerian Pidmohylny, Petrov is considered to be the founder of the Ukrainian intellectual novel.

Although Petrov is remembered as a writer today, during his life he was a scientist in the first place.

During World War II he was in the territory occupied by Germans where he worked in several Ukrainian magazines and newspapers.

After World War II Petrov stayed in emigration in Germany, during which he was a professor at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich.

Later it was discovered (due to a reference to him in Aleksandr Mongait's survey book) that he returned to the Soviet Union and kept working at the Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv.