Yasinchuk, Lev

Yasinchuk, Lev [Ясінчук, Лев; Jasinčuk], b 30 July 1882 in Bilobozhnytsia, Chortkiv county, Galicia, d 12 October 1963 in Brooklyn, New York State, USA. Pedagogue and community activist. He taught in a succession of village schools in Galicia and Bukovyna in 1905–14, having been dismissed several times for his community work. In 1923, after serving in the Ukrainian Galician Army and then being arrested twice in Bukovyna under the Romanian regime, he moved to Galicia. There he served as administrative director of the Ridna Shkola society in 1923–39 and played an important role in its organizational expansion. He also served as the last head of the Union of Ukrainian Private Office Employees and traveled twice to Canada and the United States as a representative of Ridna Shkola. He was inspector of Polish schools in Lviv (1939–40) and then of elementary schools in Galicia (1941–4). He emigrated to Austria in 1945 and to the United States in 1949. His writings include the memoirs of his travels abroad, Za okeanom (Across the Ocean, 1930); 50 lit Ridnoï shkoly, 1881–1931 (50 Years of Ridna Shkola, 1881–1931, 1931); Ridna shkola v ideï i zhytti (Ridna Shkola in Concept and in Reality, 1934); Ukraïns'ke doshkillia (Ukrainian Preschool, 1936); and submissions about education in Bukovyna and Lviv to regional and municipal histories. He also edited Kameniari (Chernivtsi) and wrote numerous articles for pedagogical periodicals in Galicia and Bukovyna and for newspapers in Kyiv, eg Rada (Kyiv), the United States, eg Svoboda, Canada, and Argentina.

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