Oskilko, Volodymyr

Oskilko, Volodymyr [Оскілько Володимир; Oskil’ko], b 1892 in Volhynia gubernia, d 26 May 1926 in Rivne, Volhynia. Civic leader and army officer. A school teacher by profession, he emerged in November 1918 as the chief organizer of anti-Hetman insurgency in Volhynia (see Hetman government). At the beginning of 1919 he was appointed commander of the Northern Group of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic on the Bolshevik-Polish front. On 29 April 1919 he attempted an unsuccessful coup d'état against the UNR government in Rivne and fled to Poland. After returning to Rivne in the early 1920s, he edited the semiweekly Dzvin (1924–5), the organ of the Ukrainian People's party, which propagated a pro-Polish line, and wrote his memoirs, Mizh dvoma svitamy (Between Two Worlds, 1924). He was killed by unknown assassins.

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