Vitovsky, Dmytro

Vitovsky, Dmytro [Vitovs’kyj], b 8 November 1887 in Medukha, Stanyslaviv county, Galicia, d 8 July 1919 near Ratibor, Silesia, Germany. (Photo: Dmytro Vitovsky.) Military officer. A student activist at Lviv University, he later organized educational and paramilitary organizations in Stanyslaviv. During the First World War he served in the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen as a company commander and carried out special assignments. He was chairman of the Ukrainian Military Committee, which staged the November Uprising in Lviv, 1918. He was briefly (1–5 November 1918) the first commander of the Ukrainian Galician Army and then minister of defense of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (until 13 February 1919). On 1 January 1919 he was promoted from major to colonel. After serving on the Ukrainian National Rada (February–April 1919) he attended the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the Western Ukrainian delegation. On the return flight his plane crashed, and he was killed.

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