Ukrainian National State Union

Ukrainian National State Union (Український національно-державний союз; Ukrainskyi natsionalno-derzhavnyi soiuz, or УНДС; UNDS). An émigré political party established in 1946 in Neu-Ulm, Germany. It incorporated a number of groups, including interwar émigré activists; officials of the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic; veterans of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic (Union of Ukrainian Veterans); post-Second World War émigrés from Soviet Ukraine (notably the so-called Kharkiv community, which included Volodymyr Dolenko and Vasyl Dubrovsky); and political centrists from Western Ukraine (including Mykhailo Dobriansky-Demkovych, Volodymyr Kubijovyč, Kost K. Pankivsky, and Mykola Shlemkevych), many of whom had been involved with the Ukrainian Central Committee. The party’s official platform was written by Dobriansky-Demkovych. Tymish Olesiiuk was its first president, and Dolenko headed its executive council. The UNDS was a founding member of the Ukrainian National Council, and Borys Ivanytsky, a UNDS activist, was elected as its chairman. At the second UNDS congress, in 1947, the structure of the party was changed, and a central committee headed by Mykhailo Oleksiiv was elected. In 1950 Mykola Livytsky was chosen as leader; he was succeeded by T. Leontii in 1967 and Ivan Samiilenko in 1982. Other active UNDS members included Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko, Mykhailo Sadovsky, Arkadii Valiisky, Oleksander Vyshnivsky, Andrii Yakovliv, and Oleksander Yurchenko.

Several groups seceded from the UNDS coalition within a decade of its founding and established their own political parties. In 1948 the Kharkiv representatives established the Union of Lands of United Ukraine (later known as the Peasant party). In 1950 Kost K. Pankivsky, Mykola Shlemkevych, and Mykhailo Vetukhiv established the Union of Ukrainian National Democrats in the United States. A group of former adherents of the Ukrainian Central Committee led by Volodymyr Kubijovyč also left the party. By 1956 only a core group of supporters of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) remained; T. Leontii, was the long-standing director of the UNR executive branch, and in 1965 the UNDS president, Mykola Livytsky, was elected as president of the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic.

The official organ of the party, the monthly periodical Meta (Munich), was published in Munich in 1952–82 (before being moved to Philadelphia) and served as the semiofficial voice of the Ukrainian National Republic in exile from the 1970s. In the 1950s the Biuleten' UNDS briefly appeared in the United States of America. The party also put out four issues of Biblioteka ukraïns'koho derzhavnyka (1946–9) and other publications.

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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