Levynsky, Volodymyr

Levynsky, Volodymyr [Левинський, Володимир; Levyns'kyj], b 8 August 1880 in Drohobych, Galicia, d 19 December 1953 in Vienna. Editor, journalist, and political leader and theorist. A dissenter who left the Ukrainian Radical party in 1900 and helped establish the Ukrainian Social Democratic party, Levynsky edited the party’s newspapers Volia (Lviv), Zemlia i volia (1907–12), and Vpered (Lviv) (1912–13), as well as the monthly Dzvin (Kyiv) (1913–14). During the First World War he worked in Vienna and Geneva, and later he belonged to the External Group of the Ukrainian Communist party in Vienna, where together with Volodymyr Vynnychenko he edited its weekly Nova doba (Vienna) (1920–1). In the 1930s he returned to Lviv and contributed articles to Nova Ukraïna (Prague), and Nova kul’tura, Kul’tura, Novi shliakhy, and Kooperatyvna respublyka. His most important publications are Narys rozvytku ukraïns’koho robitnychoho rukhu v Halychyni (An Outline of the Development of the Ukrainian Workers’ Movement in Galicia, 1914), Tsarskaia Rossiia i ukrainskii vopros (Tsarist Russia and the Ukrainian Question [also in Ukrainian], 1917), Narodnist’ i derzhava (Nationality and the State, 1919, translated into French), Sotsiialistychna revoliutsiia i Ukraïna (The Socialist Revolution and Ukraine, 1920), Relihiia, nauka i sotsiializm (Religion, Science, and Socialism, 1920), and Sotsiialistychnyi Internatsional i ponevoleni narody (The Socialist International and Subjugated Peoples, 1920, also translated into French).

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