Mykola Livytsky. 1950s. Central State Audiovisual and Electronic Archive
If we are talking about me and my closest current employees at the State Center, we are not talking about individuals. We did not ‘fight’ for ‘positions’ or ‘power’ but for the establishment of the State Center of the Ukrainian People’s Republic with an exile government and for the idea of a struggle that will ultimately lead to a liberation revolution simultaneously or almost simultaneously among all or almost all enslaved peoples and to the overthrow of the Russian-Soviet empire, on the ruins of which the sovereign states of the now enslaved peoples will be restored
Mykola Livytsky
Mykola Livytsky was a Ukrainian diplomat and politician, President of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile (1967-1989).
He was born on January 9, 1907, in the town of Zhmerynka, Vinnytsia region, to Andrii Livytsky and Mariia Tkachenko from the village of Bilylivka, Kyiv region. The Livytskys were of noble origin, from the Poltava region. Mykola studied at the Taras Shevchenko Gymnasium in Kyiv, but did not graduate because he and his family emigrated to Poland in late 1920. His father was the Prime Minister of the Ukrainian People’s Republic at the time. He continued his education in Warsaw, Poděbrady, Prague, and Geneva. He was an activist in the Ukrainian student movement, contributing to the Tryzub (Trident) magazine, which was associated with his father’s associate Symon Petliura, and the Lviv-based “Dilo”. In 1923-1939, he was secretary of the delegation of the UPR government to the League of Nations. He mostly lived in Geneva. All this time he was a close associate of his father, who served as President of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile from 1926 to 1954.
In 1938-1939, he lived in Khust, the capital of Carpathian Ukraine, where he represented the interests of the UPR government in exile, in particular, he studied the possibility of involving former soldiers of the UPR Army in the organization of the army of the newly created Ukrainian state.
At the outbreak of World War II, he lived in Warsaw, and in 1942 moved to Kyiv to establish political work on behalf of the UPR government in exile. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo and transported to Poland.
In 1948, his father initiated the creation of the Ukrainian National Council, a special legislative authority made up of Ukrainian political forces in exile of various ideological orientations. In 1954, Mykola became the head of the foreign affairs department of this institution. By that time, the Livytsky family had already moved to the United States.
From 1957 to 1967, Mykola Livytsky served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Head of the Government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile. In 1967-1989 he was President of the UPR in exile.
He died on December 8, 1989, in Philadelphia, a few years before the collapse of the USSR.
He was buried at the Ukrainian Orthodox cemetery in South Bound Brook.
He is the author of “West – East and the Problem of Nations Enslaved by Moscow” (1975) and “The Central Committee of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Exile between 1920 and 1940” (1984).
