Ukrainian National Committee (United States)

Ukrainian National Committee (United States) (Український народний комітет; Ukrainskyi narodnyi komitet, or УНК; UNK). A political umbrella organization of Ukrainians in the United States of America in 1918–22 which rivaled the Federation of Ukrainians in the United States. It emerged from the Ukrainian Alliance of America. A coalition of church and community organizations that included the Ukrainian National Association, the UNK was headed by Petro Poniatyshyn (the administrator of the Greek Catholic church in the United States), with Volodymyr Lototsky as its secretary. A ‘people’s congress’ was held on 16–17 January 1919 to give the UNK a broader mandate. The UNK organized a wide range of activities in support of Ukrainian statehood, including publishing, fund-raising, lobbying the US government, and maintaining information bureaus (see Press and information bureaus abroad) in New York and Washington, DC. The UNK was a member of the Mid-European Democratic Union (headed by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk) and the League of Four Nations (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine). In 1919 the UNK sent its delegation (K. Bilyk and Congressman J.A. Hamill) to the Paris Peace Conference. The UNK was disbanded in 1922 in the interests of forming a larger organization, the United Ukrainian Organizations in America.

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