Shashkevych, Bohuslav

Shashkevych, Bohuslav [Шашкевич, Богуслав; Šaškevyč], b 1 July 1888 in Lolyn, Dolyna county, Galicia, d 23 June 1935 in Edmonton, Alberta. Military figure; great-grandson of Markiian Shashkevych. An officer in the Austrian army on the eastern front of the First World War, he was captured by Russian forces in 1915 and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Turkestan. He escaped and led an Iranian rebel unit against the British and Russians. In 1916 he returned via Baghdad and Istanbul to Austria and rejoined the Austrian army on the northern and eastern fronts. He received six military decorations. During the Ukrainian-Polish War in Galicia, 1918–19, he was a major commanding the Uhniv Brigade of the Ukrainian Galician Army and, in May 1919, the First Division of the Ukrainian Galician Army. In June and July 1919 he organized and commanded the Zbarazh Brigade and then the Zolochiv Brigade of the Ukrainian Galician Army. In February 1920, instead of joining the Red Ukrainian Galician Army, his brigade fought the Bolsheviks and joined with the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic under Col Oleksander Udovychenko in Mohyliv-Podilskyi. After being released from an internment camp in Czechoslovakia he moved to Germany (1922) and then to Canada.

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