Shtul, Oleh
Shtul, Oleh [Штуль, Олег; Štul'; pseudonyms: O. Zhdanovych, O. Shuliak], b 1 July 1917 in Lopatychi, Ovruch county, Volhynia gubernia, d 4 November 1977 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Political activist, publicist, and editor. He studied philology and history at Warsaw University (1934–9). From 1939 he was active in the cultural arm of the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN), in which he collaborated closely with Oleh Olzhych, served as cultural representative for the executive of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the Generalgouvernement, and represented central Ukrainian territories in the Central Executive of the OUN (1941–3). From 1941 he participated in the OUN expeditionary groups, and in 1942 he began training partisan cadres in Volhynia. In 1943 he was proxy for the OUN colonel Andrii Melnyk at the Polisian Sich under Taras Borovets (later the Ukrainian People’s Revolutionary Army) and coeditor of its organ Oborona Ukraïny. Shtul was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943–4. He remained as an émigré (displaced person) in Germany and Austria after 1945. Continuing his activities as a journalist and publicist, he contributed to several OUN publications, Za samostiinist’, Orlyk, and the weekly Promin’ (Salzburg). In 1948 he moved to Paris, where he edited the weekly Ukraïns’ke slovo (Paris) until 1977. He was also press and information secretary for PUN (member from 1955) and later became its vice-president (1964) and president (until his death). Shtul was an active member of the Ukrainian National Alliance in France and the Ukrainian Orthodox parish in Paris, as well as head of the controlling commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe in 1966–77.
Apart from his many articles he wrote the surveys of Ukrainian history Viky hovoriat' (The Ages Speak, 1940, 1941, 1954), V im’ia pravdy (In the Name of Truth, 1947, 1948, 1991), about the origins and actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and Na zov Kyieva (Heeding the Call of Kyiv, 1977), about the life and works of Olena Teliha, and edited the anthology Olena Teliha (1977). Shtul was buried in South Bound Brook, New Jersey. Memoirs about him and a selection of his articles were published by the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe under the title Paryzh Olehovi Shtulevi (Paris to Oleh Shtul, 1986).
Arkadii Zhukovsky
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]