Shapoval, Oleksander

Shapoval, Oleksander [Шаповал, Олександер; Šapoval], b 1888 in Pysarshchyna, Pyriatyn county, Poltava gubernia, d 13 May 1972 in Chicago, Illinois. Military leader. He served as an officer in the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic, in which he commanded the Khmelnytsky Regiment (1917), and took part in the overthrow of the Hetman government in 1918. Under the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic he commanded the UNR Army’s front in Right-Bank Ukraine against the Bolsheviks, and on 13 February 1919 he became defense minister in Serhii Ostapenko’s cabinet. Eventually he left the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Independentists and joined the hetmanite movement. After emigrating to Prague he managed the library of the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute. In 1927 he settled in the United States, where he was appointed supreme otaman of the United Hetman Organization and editor of its organ Nash stiah.

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