Bych, Luka

Bych, Luka [Бич, Лука; Byč], b 30 November 1875 in Stanytsia Pavlivska, Yeisk county in the Kuban, d 12 January 1945 in Prague. Jurist and economist, Kuban political leader. Bych was a member of the Black Sea Committee of the Revolutionary Ukrainian party in Katerynoslav, leading member of the Kuban Territorial Council, first prime minister of the Kuban People's Republic (1917–8), president of the Kuban Legislative Council, and chairman of the Kuban delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1918–20. After emigrating to Czechoslovakia, he was a docent and then professor of economics at the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy, later the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute, in Poděbrady. In 1937–9 he was director of the institute. Bych is the author of many articles, particularly on banking, local self-government, and economics, several textbooks of the academy and the institute in Poděbrady, and the political work Kuban' u kryvomu dzerkali (The Kuban in a Distorted Mirror, Prague 1927).

[This article was updated in 2019.]