Yurchenko, Oleksander

Yurchenko, Oleksander [Юрченко, Олександер; Jurčenko], b 18 November 1904 in Kyiv, d 26 June 1962 in Munich. Historian of law, Sovietologist, and civic figure; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1958. A graduate in law from the Kyiv Institute of the National Economy (1926) and the Kyiv Institute of Trade and Distribution (1933), he worked as a researcher for the Commission for the Study of the History of Western-Ruthenian and Ukrainian Law at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1926–1) and taught in secondary schools and institutes of higher education (1926–41). A postwar displaced person in Germany, he became a professor of Soviet law at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich as well as an associate of the Institute for the Study of the USSR (from 1954), an activist in the Ukrainian National State Union party, and an executive member of the Ukrainian National Council (1952–4 and 1957–62). He wrote a number of studies about the legal status of the Ukrainian SSR and the nature of Soviet federalism, including a posthumously published monograph entitled Ukraïns'ko-rosiis'ki stosunky pislia 1917 r. v pravnomu aspekti (Ukrainian-Russian Relations after 1917 from a Legal Aspect, 1971).

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