Turning the pages back... July 6, 1896 (07/04/99)

Turning the pages back...

July 6, 1896

Ivan Tyktor vies with Yevhen Chykalenko for the title of the most successful and influential Ukrainian publisher ever. Born on July 6, 1896, in Krasne, Zolochiv county (about 40 miles east of Lviv, where the main railway line running eastward from the Galician capital forks north and south), he attended gymnasiums in Rohatyn and Lviv, then studied law and commerce at the underground Ukrainian University in Lviv.

When the first world war broke out in 1914, Tyktor enlisted in the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, and as the wider conflict devolved into a more localized armed struggle for Ukrainian independence in 1918, he continued his military service in the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) until 1920.

He resumed his studies the following year, graduating from the Lviv Trade Academy in 1922, and securing a law degree from the underground university in 1925. In the meantime, he launched his spectacular career in publishing. In 1923, he founded the Ukrainska Presa publishing house, which until the outbreak of the second world war in 1939, was the largest, most important and most successful Ukrainian operation in western Ukraine.

He employed over 100 writers, editors, administrators and printers, a staff that included some of the most prominent writers, journalists and artists in Halychyna. Tyktor's flagship was the Lviv-based daily newspaper Novyi Chas, which became the most widely read Ukrainian paper in the region.

He also issued the weekly Narodnia Sprava for the rural population, whose circulation reached 40,000 in 1938, partly because of an inventive policy of providing financial support to subscribers who suffered fire damage or losses in livestock. Other leading concerns of the Tyktor house were the children's monthly Dzvinochok, the semi-monthly Nash Prapor and the semi-weekly Nash Lemko.

In 1933, when the monthly satirical magazine Zyz closed up shop, Tyktor stepped in to further the career of its increasingly famous editor and illustrator, Edward Kozak. The result was Komar, a vehicle for Kozak's caricatures and writings that served as the eventual template for the émigré monthly Lys Mykyta. The press run of these four publications of Tyktor's house peaked at 106,500 in 1938.

Tyktor published over 400 titles in this period, including a range of almanacs, pamphlets, booklets and short books. The latter were often sent to his periodicals' regular subscribers free, and included the series Ukrainska Biblioteka (Ukrainian Library), Ridne Slovo (Native Word), Ranok (Morning), Amatorskyi Teatr (Amateur Theater), Muzychna Biblioteka (Musical Library) and Biblioteka Tserkovno-Relihiinykh Knyh (Library of Church and Religious Books).

Major ventures Tyktor embarked on were issued under the Istorychna Biblioteka (Historical Library) series, including a history of Ukraine (1931), a history of Ukrainian armed forces (1935) and a history of Ukrainian culture (1937).

During the war, he ran the Krakow-based Nove Zhyttia religious publishing house and served as Ukrainske Vydavnytstvo's trade department director until 1941. That year, he moved to Rivne where, together with Stepan Skrypnyk (who later became Patriarch Mstyslav of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church) he founded the Volyn publishing house. In the spring of 1943 he was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo and held in the local prison until November, narrowly avoiding the executions that claimed the lives of 870 fellow inmates.

Tyktor managed to escape, fleeing to Austria in 1944, where he headed the Ukrainian Students' Aid Commission, then emigrated to Canada in 1948, settling in Winnipeg. There he initially served as general manager of the Novyi Shliakh publishing house (the concern had not yet moved to Toronto), but soon returned to his private efforts. In 1951 he founded the Club of Friends of the Ukrainian Book publishing house, which revised and reissued several of Ukrainska Presa's most important titles, as well as about 40 books of prose and poetry.

In his declining years, Tyktor moved to Ottawa to live with his daughter. He died on August 27, 1982.

Sources: "Tyktor, Ivan," "Ukrainska Presa," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); "30-ty Littia Vydavnychoii Dialnosty Ivana Tyktora, 1923-1953," (Winnipeg: Club of Friends of the Ukrainian Book, 1953).

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