Chyzh, Yaroslav

Chyzh, Yaroslav [Чиж, Ярослав; Čyž, Jaroslav], b 17 February 1894 in Dubliany near Lviv, d 13 December 1958 in Elmhurst, Illinois, USA. Military and civic leader and journalist. Chyzh was one of the organizers of the Sich Riflemen in Kyiv and in 1919 served as a political officer on the staff of the Siege Corps of Sich Riflemen. For a time he edited the journal Strilets'ka dumka. In 1921 he became a member of the leadership of the Ukrainian Military Organization and fled to Prague where he graduated in 1922 from the philosophy faculty of Prague University. Emigrating to the United States of America in 1923, he edited until 1942 the Ukrainian Fraternal Association’s paper Narodna volia. In the 1920s he was one of the leaders of the political organization Oborona Ukrainy and edited its organ Ukraïns’ka hromada (USA). In 1942 he became deputy-director of the Common Council for American Unity and in 1952 a co-editor of its press and information bureau. He acted as adviser to the American government on ethnic affairs. In 1956 he was one of the organizers and then the executive director of the Committee of the President’s People-to-People Program and headed UAAS Commission for the Study of the History of Ukrainian Emigration.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]