Lebed, Mykola.

Mykola Lebed (1910-1998) is an important figure for Ukrainian history, particularly for the period from the 1930s to the 1970s when he was closely involved in the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UVHR), and the Prolog Research Corporation. These organizations were engaged at various times in struggles against occupying forces in Western Ukraine, including the Polish inter-war regime, the German and Soviet Armies during the Second World War, and, subsequently, the Soviet post-war regime. Upon immigrating to the United States, Lebed's active involvement in the Ukrainian movement continued. He was instrumental in establishing the Prolog Research Corporation that was responsible for monitoring and reporting on political, economic, and cultural developments in Soviet Ukraine, including studies of the important dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Mykola Lebed was born on November 23, 1910, in Novi Strilyshcha, Bibrka county in Western Ukraine. In 1929 while attending school in Lviv, he helped organize the youth movement of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). During the 1930s he served as a liaison between the OUN leadership, Ievhen Konovalets in Europe, and the organization's national executive in Western Ukraine. His liaison activities led to travel to Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Italy. Lebed was arrested in 1934 for complicity in planning the assassination of Gen. Bronislaw Pieracki, the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, who was known for his repressive measures against Ukrainians. Sentenced to death, the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and Lebed remained in a Warsaw prison until September 1939. Forced to evacuate, Lebed managed to escape the prison column marching eastwards.

Lebed went to Krakow where he resumed active participation in the OUN. With the OUN split in 1940 into Bandera and Melnyk factions, Lebed joined the faction headed by Stepan Bandera. After Bandera and several of his deputies were arrested by the German Gestapo for establishing a provisional government and proclaiming the renewal of Ukrainian statehood in Lviv in June 1941, Lebed, as second deputy to Bandera, assumed leadership of OUN's anti-Nazi resistance in Ukraine. He played a key role in organizing the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which by 1943 served as the military arm of the OUN(B). In 1943 Lebed relinquished the post of acting chief of OUN(B) and assumed the duties of OUN(B)'s chief of foreign affairs.

Lebed's wife, Daria (Hnatkivska), whom he married in a Warsaw prison while both were serving sentences as co-conspirators in the plotting of the assassination of Pieracki, was arrested in January 1944 for a second time by the Germans (the first time in Lviv in 1941). She and their daughter, Zoriana, were sent to a concentration camp in Ravensbruck, Germany, where they remained until fall 1944.

Towards the end of the Second World War, during the spring of 1944, the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) was being organized and was officially established on July 11-15, 1944, at a meeting in the Sambir region of Western Ukraine, uniting members of various political parties and liberation movements from both Western and Soviet Ukraine under an umbrella liberation movement with the purpose of combining forces to fight both Nazi and Soviet occupation. Lebed served as the external liaison officer and director of the information bureau of the UHVR. In this role, he was ordered to go abroad to gain Allied support for Ukraine's struggle for independence. The External Representation of the UHVR was established and Lebed appointed its general secretary. He made his way to Italy, and in 1947 left for West Germany.

In 1949 Lebed immigrated to the U.S. where he continued his activities on behalf of the External Representation of the UHVR. He also organized a group of scholars and researchers and set up the Prolog Research Corporation. He served as its president (1952 to 1975) and vice-president (1982-1985). He was also on the editorial board of Litpys UPA (from 1975). Lebed is the author of the book UPA: Ukrainska povstanska armiia (1946; 2nd ed. 1987), and numerous articles on the independence movement in Western Ukraine.

Lebed passed away on July 19, 1998. He is buried at St. Andrew's Ukrainian Orthodox Cemetery in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.

From the guide to the Papers, 1930-1995., (Ukrainian Research Institute Library, Harvard University)