Levyt︠s︡ʹkyĭ, Volodymyr

Volodymyr Levyts'kyi, prominent Ukrainian émigré political and social activist, community leader, journalist, and editor, was born 16 August 1888 in the village of Krychka, Stanislav district, Ivano- Frankivs'k region. He studied law in the universities in L'viv, Krakow, and Vienna in 1912-1914. After the beginning of World War I, Levyts'kyi became a member of the Soiuz Vyzvolennia Ukrainy (Union for the Liberation of Ukraine) and worked for the organization in German internment camps in 1915- 1918. He organized cultural and educational work for Ukrainian internees. In 1919-1920, Levyts'kyi headed the press office of the mission of the Ukrains'ka Narodna Respublika in Berlin.

After emigrating to the United States in 1924, he became a leading member of Oborona Ukrainy (Defense of Ukraine) and later its secretary (1933-1941), and editor of its Orhanizatsiini visti (1936-1941). Oborona Ukrainy was a Ukrainian political organization of a radical socialist profile, established in 1920 in the United States to assist the political and military struggles for independence in Western Ukraine. Until 1923, it was a small, clandestine organization, then it became a wider, public one with individual branches and an official newspaper, Ukrains'ka hromada (1923-1932). Its members dominated the leadership of the Ukrainian Workingmen's Association and worked closely with the Ukrainian Socialist Radical party in Western Ukraine. Its leading activists included M. Sichyns'kyi, M. Tsehlyns'kyi, and Ia. Chyzh. During the 1940s, some of its leaders, most notably Sichysn'kyi and Levyts'kyi, gradually adopted a Sovietophile outlook that helped cause a split in Oborona Ukrainy at its 1947 convention. The faction led by Sichyns'khyi and Levyts'kyi soon dissipated. During World War II, Levyts'kyi held a strongly anti-Nazi position and after the war came out against granting entry visas to the USA to those who had collaborated with the Nazis.

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