Roman Smal-Stotsky

.. From the point of view of Ukrainian practical politics, the greatest merit of the exiled UPR government in Poland was the constant intensification of the Ukrainian liberation cause behind the diplomatic scenes. In this endeavor, Professor Roman Smal-Stotsky deserves recognition and gratitude for putting in maximum work, ingenuity, and energy, blazing a long trail into the jungle of Western ignorance about Ukraine and the Ukrainian liberation cause.

Ivan Kedryn-Rudnytsky, historian and journalist

Roman Smal-Stotsky was a Ukrainian linguist, diplomat, and politician.
He was born on January 8, 1893, in Chernivtsi. His father, Stepan, was a Ukrainian language and literature professor at the University of Chernivtsi. He studied at the Second Imperial Royal Gymnasium in Chernivtsi and later studied linguistics at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, and Munich.

During the First World War, in September 1914, the Russian army seized Chernivtsi and ransacked the Smal-Stotsky residence. Soon after, 22-year-old Roman was mobilized to the Bukovyna 41st Infantry Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army but was quickly discharged from military service for health reasons. After his demobilization, Roman went to Germany, where he joined the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine and was engaged in educational activities among Ukrainian prisoners of war.

After the November Uprising of 1918 and the Western Ukrainian National Republic (ZUNR) proclamation, Roman Smal-Stotsky began his diplomatic career with appointments as ambassador to the ZUNR and the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) in Germany. After the UPR embassy liquidation in Berlin in 1923, Smal-Stotsky first served as a professor at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague and, shortly after that, moved to the United Kingdom. There, he taught and unofficially acted as an ambassador of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

Smal-Stotsky departed from London to Warsaw in 1925. From 1926 to 1939, he was a professor at the Warsaw University, specializing in linguistics. Since 1934, he had been a full member of the philological section of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

Smal-Stotsky was an outstanding scholar. But his political activity is even more significant. An important part of his work as a politician was his civil and diplomatic service in exile governments. Another long-term project was an organization created in Warsaw (with the support of the Polish government) called the Promethean League of Nations Subjugated by Moscow, which was perhaps the largest anti-Soviet structure of the time.

At the outbreak of World War II, Roman Smal-Stotsky was in Lviv. He escaped from the Soviet army by transiting through Krakow to Prague, where, along with other leading figures of the Promethean League, he was arrested by the Germans but soon released. However, he remained under police surveillance until the end of the war.

In late 1947, he left for the United States, where he became a professor of East European history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1949, he founded the Slavic Institute at the same university and served as its director until 1965. From 1952 to 1969, he was the second Chairman of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States.

Roman Smal-Stotsky passed away on April 27, 1969, in Washington, D.C., and was buried at the Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.