Udovychenko, Oleksander

Udovychenko, Oleksander [Удовиченко, Олександер; Udovyčenko], b 20 February 1887 in Kharkiv, d 21 April 1975 in Maintenon, near Paris. UNR Army field commander. After completing a course at the Nikolai Military Academy in Saint Petersburg, he held various staff positions in the Russian army. In 1917 he chaired the Ukrainian Council of the Third Caucasian Corps of the imperial army. In October he was called to Kyiv to become Symon Petliura’s military adviser. In January–March 1918 he served as chief of staff in the Haidamaka Battalion of Slobidska Ukraine and distinguished himself in fighting the Bolshevik insurrection in Kyiv. He was assigned to the General Staff of the UNR Army in April 1918 and soon promoted to colonel. After serving as general quartermaster of the southwestern front (November 1918–March 1919) he commanded the Third Iron Rifle Division of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic. He particularly distinguished himself in battels against the Red Army near Vapniarka in July 1919 and near Kotovsk in 1919. Ill with typhus, Udovychenko was captured by Anton Denikin’s forces. He escaped in the spring of 1920 and once again took command of the reactivated Iron Division. From November 1920 he served as general inspector of Polish internment camps for UNR soldiers. After emigrating to France in 1924, he presided over its veteran Ukrainian Military Society (1927–75) and the European Federation of Ukrainian Veterans' Organizations (1953–75) and served as vice-president of the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic and its defense minister (1954–61). He was promoted to major general by the government-in-exile. He wrote Ukraïna u viini za derzavnist' (Ukraine in the War for statehood, 1954) and Tretia zalizna dyviziia (The Third Iron Division, 2 vols, 1971, 1982).

Petro Sodol

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]