League of Ukrainian Nationalists

League of Ukrainian Nationalists (Леґія українських націоналістів; Legiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv, or ЛУН [LUN]). A nationalist organization formed in Poděbrady on 12 November 1925 out of three closely related societies, the Ukrainian National Alliance, the Union of Ukrainian Fascists, and the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. Its purpose was to develop a distinctive Ukrainian nationalist ideology and to unify the national struggle. During its four years of existence the LUN counteracted Sovietophile tendencies and the influence of communist doctrine among Ukrainian émigrés and co-operated in the formation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Its membership consisted mostly of émigrés from the Dnipro River region (veterans of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic and students) and included people such as Yevhen Malaniuk, Leonid Mosendz, Dmytro Demchuk, Yakiv Moralevych, and Mykhailo Seleshko. Branches of the league sprang up in Prague, Brno, Berlin, and Luxembourg, but Poděbrady remained its main center. Its president was Mykola Stsiborsky. In 1927 the LUN published two issues of Derzhavna natsiia under the editorship of Malaniuk.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]