Levytsky, Dmytro

Levytsky, Dmytro [Levyc’kyj], b 1877 in Dobrachyn, Sokal county, Galicia, d 31 October 1942 in Bukhara, Uzbek SSR. (Photo: Dmytro Levytsky.) Lawyer and civic and political leader. After graduating from the law faculty of Vienna University he practiced law in Rava Ruska (1912–14) and then briefly in Berezhany. An officer in the Austrian army, he was captured by the Russians in 1915 and deported to Tashkent. During the Revolution of 1917 he organized and headed the Galician-Bukovynian Committee in Kyiv. During the Hetman government he was secretary of the oppositional Ukrainian National Union and then chief of the diplomatic mission of the Ukrainian National Republic to Denmark (1919–21). Upon returning to Galicia he edited the daily Dilo (1923–5) and served as the first president (1925–35) and then vice-president (1936–9) of the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO), which he helped found. After being elected to the Polish Sejm (1928–35) he chaired the Ukrainian Parliamentary Representation in the assembly. He formed and led the Ukrainian Co-ordinating Committee (1936–9), which represented all the legal Ukrainian parties in Galicia. He was arrested by the Soviets in September 1939 and was imprisoned in Moscow until the outbreak of the German-Soviet War, after which he was permitted to live in Uzbekistan.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]