Turning the pages back... March 21, 1868 (03/21/99)

Turning the pages back...

March 21, 1868

Baron Mykola Vasylko, born on March 21, 1868, in Chernivtsi, the regional capital of Bukovyna, into a local aristocratic family, was among the most dynamic figures to emerge on the political and diplomatic scene at the turn of the century, but had the misfortune of doing so on a losing side.

He was elected mayor of Lukavets, a Bukovynian town. In 1898 he was elected to the first of several terms as a deputy of the regional diet (legislature) in Chernivtsi and the Austrian Parliament. Together with Romanian and Jewish politicians, he formed the Freethinking Union. Through it, he facilitated the rise of Ukrainians to positions in the administration, defended their religious interests and fostered cultural development. As early as 1901, Vasylko championed the opening of a Ukrainian university in Lviv, and in 1908 assisted in the founding of a Ukrainian gymnasium in Vyzhnytsia.

According to historian Paul R. Magocsi, Bukovyna ws held up as a model for other provinces in the Hapsburg empire in its attempts to resolve nationality conflicts. "Homo Bukovinensis was used in Austro-German literature to describe a person of tolerance and of high and varied culture," Prof. Magocsi wrote. Vasylko was a "homo Bukovinensis" par excellence. In part through his influence, in 1911 Bukovyna was politically reorganized to allow for representation by profession and ethnic origin. When the first world war broke out, Vasylko found himself beset by the paranoia engendered in the Austro-Hungarian administration by the early successes of a Russian offensive in 1914; many Ukrainians were accused of pro-Russian sympathies by Austro-Hungarian authorities, interned and brutalized. Vasylko rescued many Ukrainians from the notorious Thalerhof camp.

In 1915 he founded and served as deputy leader of the Central Ukrainian Council in Vienna. In 1915-1916 he organized a Hutsul-Bukovynian Kurin as a volunteer unit for the Austrian Army, and assisted refugees displaced by the fighting in Galicia and Bukovyna. Vasylko conceived of the so-called "Austro-Ukrainian scheme," which provided (conditional on a victory by the Central Powers in the war) for uniting Podilia, eastern Galicia and Bukovyna as an autonomous territory within Austria-Hungary. As he saw it, this would effect an eventual revival of a Galician-Volhynian state.

In 1918 Vasylko served in the Ukrainian National Rada in Lviv. In February of that year, through diplomatic influence and direct participation, he contributed to the signing of the fateful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the Kyiv-based Ukrainian National Republic and the Central Powers. In the war's immediate aftermath, Vasylko served as the diplomatic representative of the Western Ukrainian National Republic government in Austria. He was the Ukrainian National Republic's ambassador to Switzerland and Germany in 1919-1924.

Vasylko died in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, on August 2, 1924.

Sources: "Vasylko, Mykola," "Bukovyna," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 1, 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984, 1993); Paul Robert Magocsi, "A History of Ukraine" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

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