Tarnovych, Yuliian

Tarnovych, Yuliian [Тарнович, Юліян; Tarnovyč, Julijan; pseudonyms: Yu. Beskyd, Yu. Zemlian, O. Zubryd], b 1 January 1903 in Rostaine, Jasło county, Galicia, d 28 September 1977 in Toronto. Journalist and writer. In Lviv he edited the Biblioteka Lemkivshchyny (Library of the Lemko Region) book series (1936–9) and Nash lemko (1934–9), a Ukrainian patriotic paper distributed in the Lemko region. During the Second World War he edited the special weekly edition of Krakivs’ki visti in Cracow and then the weekly Ridna zemlia (1941–4) in Lviv. A postwar displaced person, he worked for the paper Ukraïns'ke slovo in Regensburg, Germany, before emigrating to Canada in 1948. In Toronto he edited the newspapers Lemkivshchyna-Zakerzonnia (1949–53), Ukraïns’kyi robitnyk (1950–5), and Lemkivs’ki visti (1964–70) and the annual Lemkivs’kyi kalendar (to 1969), and coedited the Catholic weekly Nasha meta. Tarnovych wrote many articles and stories and over 25 separate works, many of them on Lemko subjects. They include an illustrated history of the Lemko region (1936; repr 1964); a book on historical monuments there (1937); the first Lemko primer in Ukrainian (ca 1937); a book on the region’s material culture (1940; repr 1941, 1972); a hiker’s guide to the region’s physical and cultural geography (1940); a book on 20 years of Polish oppression of the Lemkos (1940); a booklet about the town of Sianik (1941); the prose collections Mova stolit' (Lemkivshchyna v perekazakh) (The Language of Centuries [The Lemko Region in (Folk) Legends], 1938), Teofanova dochka (Teofan’s Daughter, 1946), and Za rodyme pravo: Opovidannia z chasiv vyzvol'nykh zmahan' Lemkivshchyny za svoie natsional'ne zhyttia (For the Inherent Right: Stories from the Times of the Liberation Struggle of the Lemko Region for Its National Life, 1948); the plays Pisnia Beskydu (Song of the Beskyd, 1938) and Rvut'sia kaidany (The Shackles Are Breaking, 1941); the novelette Na rikakh vavylons'kykh (On Babylonian Rivers, 1952); and the memoirs Na zharyshchakh Zakerzonnia (In the Razed Region beyond the Curzon Line, nd).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]