Ukrainian National Council (Kyiv)

Ukrainian National Council (Kyiv) (Ukrainska natsionalna rada). A political and civil body established on 5 October 1941 in Kyiv on the initiative of the OUN (Melnyk faction). Its presidium was headed by Mykola Velychkivsky, and its secretaries were I. Dubyna and Osyp Boidunyk. At the end of 1941 the Reichskommissariat Ukraine banned the council, which thereupon functioned underground until 1943. On 29 April 1944 the council created the All-Ukrainian National Council (VUNR) in conjunction with the Ukrainian National Council in Lviv, 1941, and representatives of the former Diet of Carpatho-Ukraine. Velychkivsky was elected president of the new council, and Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and Avhustyn Shtefan were chosen vice-presidents. Efforts to create a common program for the VUNR and the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council in the fall of 1944 did not succeed. In 1946 the VUNR, whose members were now in the emigration, ceased to function.

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