Vityk, Semen

Vityk, Semen [Вітик, Семен], b 21 February 1876 in Verkhni Hai, Drohobych county, Galicia, d 10 October 1937 in Verknieuralsk, Cheliabinsk oblast, RSFSR. Galician trade union organizer and political leader. He was a founding member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic party and the leader of the wing that collaborated with the Polish Socialist party. In 1907 and 1911 he was elected to the Austrian parliament, where he began increasingly to stress Ukrainian national rather than class interests. In 1918–19 he became a member and vice-president of the Ukrainian National Rada and of the presidium of the Labor Congress in Kyiv. After emigrating to Vienna in 1919, Vityk developed pronounced Sovietophile sympathies and opposed the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic and that of the Western Ukrainian National Republic. He published the monthly Nova hromada (Vienna) (1923–5). He moved to Soviet Ukraine in 1925 and was given a number of important journalistic posts in Kharkiv. In March 1933 he was arrested and sent to a GULAG labor camp where he was subsequently executed.

[This article was updated in 2020.]