Ukrainian Teachers' Labor Alliance

Ukrainian Teachers' Labor Alliance (Українське учительське об’єднання праці; Ukrainske uchytelske obiednannia pratsi). An organization for Ukrainian teachers, founded in 1941 as one of the separate professional labor alliances operating under the auspices of the Ukrainian Central Committee. The Teachers' Labor Alliance was the largest of these unions. Its statutes were accepted by the Generalgouvernement, with the alliance thereby receiving semiofficial status. It fulfilled the functions of the two prewar teachers' professional societies, the Ukrainian Teachers' Mutual Aid Society and the Teachers' Hromada. In addition to engaging in its own professional activities, the alliance co-operated with school authorities in creating curricula, collecting materials, overseeing teacher qualifications, organizing courses, and publishing the journal Ukraïns’ka shkola. It worked closely with the education section of the Ukrainian Central Committee. The headquarters was initially in Cracow, and from the autumn of 1941 the alliance also operated out of Lviv. It had over 8,000 members, and 80 percent of the Ukrainian teachers in the Generalgouvernement. The heads of the alliance were Ivan Herasymovych, Ivan Teslia, and Severyn Levytsky.

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