Nykyfor Hryhoriiv. Prague. Early 1920s. The Hryhoriiv family archive
The life path of N. Hryhoriiv went through several important historical stages for the Ukrainian people: two World wars, the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian National Revolution of 1917-1921, interwar emigration to Europe, the third wave of Ukrainian emigration to the United States and the institutionalization of the Ukrainian diaspora there. And he was an active participant in each of them.
Olha Sukhobokova, historian
Nykyfor Hryhoriiv was a Ukrainian politician, statesman, educator, social scientist, publicist, and publisher. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921, Minister of Education of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, co-founder of the Ukrainian emigration center in Czechoslovakia, and the first director of the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America (1949-1953).
Nykyfor Hryhoriiv was born into a large family of a rural teacher in 1883 in Burty, Cherkasy region. Guided by the desire to devote his life to serving his people, he became a teacher. While working in schools in Kyiv and Podillia (1904-1915), he joined the Ukrainian national and cultural movement and the leadership of the Podillia-based Prosvita and the Society of Ukrainian Progressives and headed a branch of the latter.
During the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921, N. Hryhoriiv was an active member of the Ukrainian Central Rada, the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries, president of the Council of Military Deputies of the Kyiv Military District, Minister of Education, and head of the UPR Army press service.
After the defeat of the UPR, the statesman continued his activities aimed at the political, socio-economic, and cultural liberation of Ukraine in exile in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the United States, and Canada. Thus, in Czechoslovakia, he was one of the leaders of the Prague Group of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries, a co-founder (with Mykyta Shapoval) of the Ukrainian Civic Committee, the Ukrainian Institute of Sociology in Prague, the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy, the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, the Ukrainian Workers’ University, the Ukrainian Peasant Association, the Ukrainian National Museum-Archive, and other Ukrainian institutions. He was an editor-in-chief and founder of several publishing houses and socio-political magazines, including the “Nova Ukraina” (New Ukraine) magazine.
In the mid-1920s, N. Hryhoriiv developed the concept of a united Ukrainian national front in exile, and in the 1930s, a program for the Ukrainian national liberation movement in World War II, based on the unification of Ukrainians and the support of the international democratic community.
In the United States, Nykyfor Hryhoriiv became a co-organizer and the first director of the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America (1949-1953), laying the foundations for its work in the future. Thus, he finally succeeded in uniting Ukrainians on both sides of the ocean into a single (albeit conditional) national front based on shared values and the idea of fighting for the liberation of Ukraine.
His life was cut short on August 5, 1953, in New York. As a social scientist, educator, and publicist, Nykyfor Hryhoriiv left behind a significant body of work, including more than 250 works, including “Moral” (Morality), “Istoriya Ukrainy v narodnykh dumakh i pisniakh” (History of Ukraine in Folk Epic Poems and Songs), “Pidstavy ukrainskoi nacionalno-derzhavnoi polityky” (Foundations of Ukrainian National and State Policy), “Osnovy nacioznannia” (Fundamentals of Nation Studies), “Ukrainska nacionalna vdacha” (Ukrainian National Character), The War and Ukrainian Democracy.
