Kravs, Antin

Kravs, Antin, b 23 November 1871 in Berhomit, Bukovyna, d 13 November 1945 in Vienna. (Photo: Antin Kravs.) General of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA). A graduate of the cadet school in Vienna (1891), he served in the Austrian army, attaining by 1918 the rank of lieutenant colonel and command of the 55th Berezhany Infantry Regiment. With the collapse of the Austrian Empire, he volunteered in November 1918 to serve in the UHA and was appointed commander of the Khyriv Group, which later became the Sambir Brigade of the Ukrainian Galician Army. In the spring of 1919 he was given command of the Third (Berezhany) Brigade of the Ukrainian Galician Army, and in June 1919 was promoted to brigadier general. As commander of the Kyiv Army Group, he captured Kyiv on 30 August 1919. In 1920 Kravs commanded a unit of the Kherson Division of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic composed of UHA soldiers who had avoided capture by the Poles. Unwilling to fight alongside the Polish army, this unit left the UNR Army in August 1920 and made its way to Czechoslovakia, where he was interned until 1924. Kravs wrote a volume of memoirs: Za ukraïns’ku spravu (For the Ukrainian Cause, 1937).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]