Ulas Samchuk

We will return to our great, tortured, suffering land of ancestors. Not today, but tomorrow, not in this generation, but in the next; we’ll be back not only as living matter but also as a living spirit, and above all, live forever in our work.

Ulas Samchuk

Ulas Samchuk was a Ukrainian writer, publicist, translator, public and political figure from Canada, and the head of the Artistic Ukrainian Movement (MUR).

The writer was born in Derman, Rivne region, on February 20, 1905. Ulas Samchuk lived a long and exciting life. However, for almost sixty years, he was forced to live in exile. In the late 1920s, he moved to Germany. He studied at the University of Breslau (now University of Wroclaw, 1928-1929), visited art galleries, the opera house, and various exhibitions. During the German period, Ulas Samchuk got the idea to write a family chronicle and started cooperation with the Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (Literary Scientific Herald), which Dmytro Dontsov headed in Lviv.

In 1929, the writer moved to Prague. “In every person’s life, there is a time and a place that create the axis of their being. In my life, Prague and the time I lived there were such places,” recalled U. Samchuk. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ukrainian political and cultural life was in full swing in Prague. Therefore, the thirsty-for-knowledge student entered the Faculty of Philology of the Ukrainian Free University (1929-1931) and participated in various discussions and cultural events. Ulas Samchuk formed his political views during the Prague period and became an active member of the nationalist underground.

The writer was recognized for his novels written in the 1930s: “Volyn” trilogy, a fictional chronicle of the history of Ukraine in the twentieth century, “Maria” and “Kulak” (The Fist), the first works in world literature to deal with the topic of forced collectivization and the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine.

During the Second World War, he returned to Ukraine for a while (1941-1944). However, in 1944, he and his wife Tetiana ended up in West Germany. Ulas Samchuk lived in camps for displaced persons and refugees, immersed himself in Ukrainian social, political, and cultural life, and left detailed memories of it in his book “Planeta DiPi” (The DP Planet, 1979). Ulas Samchuk headed the Artistic Ukrainian Movement (MUR), founded in 1945 in Fürth. At that time, there were discussions about the future of Ukrainian literature and its modernization. 

In early 1946, U. Samchuk and the singer Hanna Sherey became godparents of Theodore Kostiuk, who later became a famous astrophysicist and worked for NASA.

Since 1948, Ulas Samchuk had lived in Canada. He joined the organization of Ukrainian writers “Slovo” (The Word).  He worked on the “Ost” trilogy (East, 1948, 1957, 1982)  and other works and wrote memoirs.

Ulas Samchuk died on July 09, 1987, in Toronto. He was buried at the Ukrainian cemetery of St. Volodymyr in Oakville.