Levytsky, Volodymyr S.

Levytsky, Volodymyr S. [Левицький, Володимир; Levyc’kyj], b 16 August 1888 in Krychka, Nadvirna county, Galicia, d 14 February 1980 in New York. Community leader. He worked for the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine in German internment camps (1915–18) and then headed the press office of the Ukrainian National Republic mission in Berlin (1919–20). After emigrating to the United States in 1924, he became a leading member of Oborona Ukrainy and editor of its Orhanizatsiini visti (1936–41). In 1930 he organized a choir in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in 1933 he was director of the Ukrainian pavilion at the world's fair in Chicago. He served as vice-president of the Ukrainian Fraternal Association (1933–41). At the same time he was a secretary of Oborona Ukrainy and chief editor of its Hromads’kyi holos. He gradually adopted a Sovietophile outlook that helped cause a split in Oborona Ukrainy at its 1947 convention.

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