Zalozetsky-Sas, Volodymyr

Zalozetsky-Sas, Volodymyr [Залозецький-Сас, Володимир; Zalozec'kyj], b 28 July 1884 in Chernivtsi, d 13 July 1965 in Ysper, Niederösterreich, Austria. Bukovynian political, cultural, and civic leader, diplomat, and art scholar. He studied at Chernivtsi University and the universities of Vienna, Munich, and Florence and obtained doctorates in law as well as archeology and art history. From 1910 he served as a member of the Austrian central committee for the preservation of art and historical monuments in Vienna and as chief conservator of historical relics and art in the non-Germanic provinces of the monarchy. Having been mobilized to serve in the Austrian army in 1914, he was captured by Russian forces. In the fall of 1918 he returned to Bukovyna, where he became a member of the Ukrainian Regional Committee and of the Bukovynian delegation to the Ukrainian National Rada of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (ZUNR). On 10 November 1918 he became head of the Ukrainian government in Bukovyna, and in 1919 the ZUNR government appointed him to take part in the talks with the so-called Little Mission of the Entente powers. This appointment led to his position as councillor and chargé d’affaires of the Extraordinary Diplomatic Mission of the ZUNR in Bern, Switzerland.

In 1920 Zalozetsky-Sas returned to Bukovyna. He became involved in political work and was cofounder and head of the Ukrainian National party (UNP) in Bukovyna (1927–38) as well as official Ukrainian representative to the Romanian government. He was elected a senator (1928–32 and 1934–8) and member of parliament (1932–4). A champion of the political, cultural, and religious rights of the Ukrainians under Romanian rule, he served as a delegate to the national minorities section of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1928–38. In 1940 Zalozetsky-Sas headed the Ukrainian National Hromada in Romania, and in 1944 he moved to Vienna, where he remained active in community and cultural affairs.

Zalozetsky-Sas was honorary president of many Bukovynian cultural and civic organizations as well as founder and head of the Ukrainian Museum of Ethnology in Chernivtsi (1927–40). He researched the art and ethnography of Bukovyna and wrote Künstler oder Kunsthistoriker (1924), Die Ostereier der ukrainischen Huzulen (1942), and Ein Huzulenteller (1944) as well as the play Henii narodu (The People’s Genius, 1932).

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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