Sel-Soiuz

Sel-Soiuz (Ukrainske sotsiialistychne obiednannia Selianskyi soiuz [The Peasant Union Ukrainian Socialist Alliance]). A Galician Ukrainian political party formed in March 1924 by members of the socialist faction of the Ukrainian Club in the Polish Sejm. The party carried out most of its activities in Volhynia and the Kholm region. Its program, ratified on 27 August 1924, asserted that it was a Ukrainian class party whose aim was to abolish the exploitation of poor Ukrainian peasants and to offer them land in the areas where they resided. It strove for national self-determination and universal, free, secular schooling in the Ukrainian language. Ultimately the party sought to eliminate capitalism and replace it with socialism. Its leaders were Pavlo Vasynchuk (first head), A. Bratun, Serhii Kozytsky, Serhii Nazaruk, M. Chuchmai, and Stepan Makivka. Its official organ was the weekly Nashe zhyttia (Kholm). Sel-Soiuz was also involved in the development of the popular educational society Ridna Khata, and the party defended the authority of the Orthodox church from attempts to restrain it. The party's attitude toward Soviet Ukraine and the Communist Party of Western Ukraine was initially reserved and tentative, but it became more positive over time. Sel-Soiuz challenged the Polish Socialist party on its own ground, by charging that that party's policies were accommodating to the right, and its cultural activities assimilationist. On 10 October 1926 Sel-Soiuz joined forces with the People's Will party to create Sel-Rob. A small group of Sel-Soiuz members, headed by Vasynchuk, refused to join the new organization and continued their independent activities as Sel-Soiuz until 1928. In 1927 they published the newspaper Selians’kyi shliakh.

Janusz Radziejowski

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]