Mandryka, Mykyta

Mandryka, Mykyta [Мандрика, Микита], b 28 September 1886 in Kyiv, d 20 August 1979 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Writer, diplomat, and community leader. A member of the Central Rada in Kyiv, Mandryka also served in the diplomatic corps of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in the Far East, Batum, Istanbul, Sofia, and Prague. He attended the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (LL D, 1925), where he became a docent of international law in 1927. He was sent to Canada in 1928 by the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries to undertake organizational work. Backed by the Ukrainian National Home (UNH) in Winnipeg, Mandryka toured extensively on a speaking tour in 1928–9, laying the groundwork for a UNH-centered Union of Ukrainian Community Centres of Canada, the establishment of the newspaper Pravda i volia, and the staging of an All-Ukrainian Educational-Economic Conference in Winnipeg (all in 1929). These efforts failed to achieve their desired goals, but provided Mandryka with enough support to establish a Ukrainian Labor Alliance (Ukrainske trudove obiednannia), which was active for about a decade. He later helped organize the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (now Ukrainian Canadian Congress) and was president of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in Canada (1970–3). His published collections of poems include Pisni (Songs, 1907), Pisni pro Anemonu (Songs about the Buttercup, 1917), Mii sad (My Orchard, 1941), Zolota osin' (Golden Autumn, 1958), Radist’ (Joy, 1959), the epic poem Mazepa (1960), and Vik Petliury (The Age of Petliura, 1966). He also wrote a History of Ukrainian Literature in Canada (1968). His nonliterary publications include Natsionalni menshosti v mizhnarodn'omu pravi (National Minorities in International Law, 1925), Istoriia konsul's'koho prava i instytutiv (History of Consular Law and Institutes, 1927), and Teoriia hospodars'koï demokratiï (The Theory of Economic Democracy, 1934).

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