People's Ukrainian Council

People's Ukrainian Council [Народня українська рада; Narodnia ukrainska rada]. An émigré political center founded in January 1929 in Prague by representatives of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, Ukrainian Peasant Association, Ukrainian Workers' Union in the Czechoslovak Republic, and the revived Ukrainian Democratic Radical party (see Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists) and by nonpartisan scholars. Mykyta Shapoval was elected its president, Serhii Shelukhyn vice-president, and Nykyfor Hryhoriiv general secretary. The Council of Elders consisted of Pavlo Bohatsky, Spyrydon Dovhal, L. Kononenko, Vsevolod Petriv, Sofiia Rusova, and Arkadii Zhyvotko. The council set itself the task of co-ordinating émigré efforts to renew Ukrainian statehood in all the Ukrainian ethnic territories. It viewed the 1920 Treaty of Warsaw between the Ukrainian National Republic and Poland as illegal because it was unsanctioned by the Ukrainian people, and it regarded the Polish military occupation of Western Ukraine as a blatant violation and conquest. The council was also opposed to the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic. In 1929 it began publishing Vistnyk Narodn'oï ukraïns'koï rady. After Shapoval’s death in 1932, the council’s activities were insignificant; it ceased to exist in 1939.

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