Kubiyovich was born in 1900 in Nowy Sącz; his father was an ethnic Ukrainian while his mother was an ethnic Pole, and he was baptized into the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. From 1918, Kubijovyč was educated at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, he served in the ranks of the Ukrainian Galician Army which unsuccessfully fought the Poles for control of the eastern part of the former Austrian province of Galicia. At the end of the Ukrainian–Polish war, he returned to his studies in geography at the Jagiellonian University. During the years 1928 to 1939, Kubijovyč taught at this institution as a lecturer (docent) but in 1939, was denied further tenure under political pressure from the Polish Ministry of War. In 1940, he was appointed professor of the Ukrainian Free University in Prague which managed to preserve a precarious existence under the Nazi occupation. From 1931, Kubijovyč had been a full member of the Galician-based Shevchenko Scientific Society, which had with some difficulty carried on its scholarly work under Polish rule; Kubijovyč headed its geography commission.