Trylovsky, Kyrylo

Trylovsky, Kyrylo [Трильовський, Кирило; Tryl'ovs'kyj], b 6 May 1864 in Bohutyn, Zolochiv county, Galicia, d 19 October 1941 in Kolomyia, Galicia. Civic and political leader, lawyer, journalist, and publisher. After graduating from Lviv University he practiced law in Kolomyia. In Zavallia, Sniatyn county, he founded the first Sich society (1900) and then oversaw its spread to other localities. From 1908 he was president of the Supreme Sich Committee, and from 1912, general otaman of the Ukrainian Sich Committee, which headed the alliance of Sich societies. Commonly known as the ‘Sich father,’ he had a great impact on the growth of national consciousness in Galicia, particularly in the Pokutia region. In 1913 he established the paramilitary Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (USS). A founder and one of the key members of the Ukrainian Radical party, he was elected to the Austrian parliament in 1907 and 1911 and to the Galician Diet in 1913. In parliament he made almost 1,000 motions and, during a Ukrainian filibuster, a 10-hour speech. At the outbreak of the First World War he became chairman of the Combat Board of the USS and a member of the General Ukrainian Council. In 1918 he was a member of the Ukrainian National Rada. After setting up a Sich committee in Vinnytsia (1919) he organized several Sich societies in Transcarpathia and, eventually, Vienna. As an émigré in Vienna he served on the codification commission of the Government-in-exile of the Western Ukrainian National Republic. He returned to Galicia in 1927. Occasionally using the pen name Klym Obukh he wrote many articles and songs of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and published a series of brochures and Sich songbooks. For many years he was a correspondent for Svoboda and Narodne slovo (United States) in the United States of America. He edited the monthly Zoria (Kolomyia) and the semimonthly Khlops'ka pravda, as well as almanacs such as Zaporozhets’ and Otaman. An extended excerpt from Trylovsky’s memoirs was published in Hei, tam na hori ‘Sich’ ide (Hey, the Sich Is Marching on the Hill, 1965).

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