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September 6, 1943

Ivan Mitrynga's exact place of birth (in Galicia's Bibrka district on the outskirts of Lviv) and date of birth (in 1909) are unknown. He studied history in Lviv, where he became active in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Within the OUN, he formed a group critically opposed to the organization's early fascist tendencies and lobbied for a more liberal and populist direction in the OUN's program.

In 1938, Mitrynga became editor of the OUN's propaganda organ Het z Bolshevyzmom (Away with Bolshevism), where he coined the slogan "Svoboda Narodam! Svoboda Liudyni!" (Freedom for Peoples, Freedom for the Individual). He also published anti-Hitlerite and anti-Stalinist pamphlets.

In 1941, he broke with the OUN (quarreling particularly with the Bandera faction) retired to Polisia and established the Ukrainian Revolutionary Party of Workers and Peasants, which merged in the following year with a small group of like-minded individuals to form the Ukrainian People's Democratic Party. Mitrynga edited the UPDP's organ and served as chief of political and propaganda staff in Taras Bulba-Borovets' underground movement, the Polisian Sich, which gave rise to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

Mitrynga died in a skirmish with Soviet partisans on September 6, 1943, in Vilia, near Ostrih, in Volyn.

Source: "Mitrynga, Ivan," "Polisian Sich," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 3, 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 6, 1998, No. 36, Vol. LXVI

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