Turning the pages back... August 31, 1883 (08/29/99)

Turning the pages back...

August 31, 1883

Osyp Nazaruk, a lifelong journalistic hack, began adult life as an activist patriot and ended as an accommodationist. Born on August 31, 1883, in Nahirianka, a village near Buchach (a town midway between Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil), he studied law at the universities of Vienna and Lviv and was active in student organizations.

In 1905, he joined an organization of anti-tsarist socialist intellectuals and writers known as the Ukrainian Radical Party (URP). When the first world war broke out, he enlisted with the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, but saw little frontline action since he served as director of their press bureau. In 1916, he became editor of the URP's semi-monthly, Hromadskyi Holos.

In October 1918, when the Lviv-based Ukrainian National Rada was established, he was chosen to be one of his party's three representatives. After the Rada proclaimed the formation of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (ZUNR) in November, he traveled to Kyiv as part of a delegation seeking military assistance from the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.

Nazaruk remained in central Ukraine for a time, even participating in the revolt against the man whose help he'd sought. This secured him a post in the UNR Directory's cabinet, as minister of press and propaganda for the administrations led by prime ministers Volodymyr Chekhivsky and Serhiy Ostapenko.

In mid-1919, Nazaruk returned to Galicia just as the Ukrainian Galician Army's reversals led to a decision to proclaim Yevhen Petrushevych "dictator and plenipotentiary." Nazaruk joined the strongman in Kamianets-Podilsk, where he witnessed the deterioration of relations between his mentor and UNR President Symon Petliura.

Nazaruk joined the ZUNR government-in-exile in Vienna, contributing to its official organs Ukrainskyi Prapor and Volia until the end of 1922, when he was sent to Canada to raise funds. While there, he repudiated socialism, embraced both Catholicism and the cause he helped defeat - Hetmanite conservatism.

Nazaruk moved to Chicago, where he organized new branches of Sich, infusing them with the Hetmanite brand of 20th century monarchism. He also edited the weekly newspaper Sich, as well as serving as co-editor of the Philadelphia-based Ameryka.

In 1926, Nazaruk returned to Lviv in a flight from politics of sorts, joining the Ukrainian Christian Organization, (UCO), which eschewed nationalism and remained loyal to the Polish state. In 1928, he assumed the editorship of the UCO's organ Nova Zoria, and acted as the mouthpiece of Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn, who advocated the Latinization of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

In 1939, Nazaruk moved, along with the Nova Zoria's editorial offices, to Stanyslaviv (Ivano Frankivsk). As the Soviets advanced as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazaruk fled to Krakow, where he died, on March 31, 1940.

Source: "Nazaruk, Osyp," "Nova Zoria," "Ukrainian National Rada," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 3, 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

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