United Ukrainian Organizations in America

United Ukrainian Organizations in America (Об’єднання українських організацій в Америці; Obiednannia ukrainskykh orhanizatsii v Amerytsi, or ОУО; OUO). A Ukrainian-American umbrella organization, set up by the Ukrainian National Congress, which convened in Philadelphia on 26–27 October 1922 for the purpose of promoting Ukrainian education in the United States, helping Ukrainian institutions in the homeland, and publicizing Ukraine’s right to independence. Its seven charter members included the Ukrainian National Association, the Providence Association of Ukrainian Catholics in America, and the Ukrainian National Aid Association in America. The OUO raised about 250,000 dollars to help Ukrainian organizations in Western Europe and in Western Ukraine and organized protest campaigns against the Polish Pacification in Galicia and the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 in Soviet Ukraine. It published several books on Ukraine for the American reader, including Polish Atrocities in Ukraine (1931), a book on the Holodomor, and Spirit of Ukraine: Ukrainian Contribution to the World Culture (1935) by D. Snovyd (pseudonym of Dmytro Dontsov). Its presidents were Rev L. Levytsky (1923–4), Rev Volodymyr Spolitakevych (1924–6), Omelian Reviuk (1927–39), and Mykola Murashko (1939–40). From 1924 its secretary was Luka Myshuha. With the establishment of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America in 1940 as the main Ukrainian representative body in the United States of America, the OUO was dissolved.

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