People's Will party

People's Will party (Partiia Narodnoi Voli, or PNV). A pro-communist Russophile political party in interwar Galicia. The origins of the party go back to 1908, when left-leaning Russophiles in Lviv began to publish the newspaper Volia naroda (Will of the People). The leaders of the group then as later were Kyrylo Valnytsky, Kuzma Pelekhaty, and Mykhailo Zaiats. On 1 May 1924 the group formally took the name People's Will party and drafted a program that was adopted in essentials at the party's first congress, on 25 April 1926. Under the influence of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine the PNV renounced its Russophile past, took up a Ukrainian orientation, and merged with the Volhynian Sel-Soiuz to form the pro-Soviet Sel-Rob party (10 October 1926). When Sel-Rob split in September 1927, the former People's Will party became Sel-Rob Left.

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