Yevhen Pavlovych Pobihushchyi was born on 15 November 1901, in the village of Postolivka [uk], in what was then the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria within Austria-Hungary into a family of Ukrainian educators.

[2] Pobihushchyi originally intended to take over his father's school, studying at both the Ukrainian Secret University [uk] in Lviv and the Greek Catholic[3] Saint John the Baptist Theological Lyceum in Stanislawów (now Ivano-Frankivsk).

Beginning in 1928, he studied at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, eventually earning a doctorate in political economy.

Shortly before the end of the Battle of the Bzura, Pobihushchyi was captured on 17 September 1939, and interned with other ethnic Ukrainians and Georgians in Luckenwalde's Stalag III-A, near Berlin.

[4] In the spring of 1940,[4] Pobihushchyi, along with other Ukrainian prisoners of war, was released as part of a deal struck between OUN ideologue Dmytro Dontsov and the German government.

The same year, Pobihushchyi-Ren published his memoirs, Mosaic of My Memories (Ukrainian: Мозаїка моїх споминів, romanized: Mozayika moyikh spomyniv) in London, and he also donated a portion of his library to the University of Lviv after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union.