The meaning of my life was and will be: Ukraine is free, Ukraine is united, Ukraine is without an enslaved person and an enslaver. I believe in victory; I believe so much that I can die. Nothing will turn me from this path: neither torture nor the hell of prisons nor death
Yaroslav Stetsko
Yaroslav Stetsko was one of the main ideologists of the Ukrainian liberation movement, a fighter for Ukraine’s independence.
He was born on January 19, 1912, in Ternopil, in the family of a priest. He graduated from the Ternopil Gymnasium and studied law and philosophy at Krakow and Lviv universities. He grew up with a strong sense of patriotism and became involved in the Ukrainian Nationalist Youth organization. Specifically, he joined the Ukrainian Military Organization.
In 1934, the Polish authorities sentenced him to 5 years for his pro-Ukrainian activities. During the investigation, he spent over 200 hours (almost nine days) without sleep, sitting on a stool, but never gave incriminating testimony. He was released under an amnesty in 1937.
On behalf of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leader Yevhen Konovalets, Stetsko arranged the OUN Great Assembly in Rome (1939). He was one of the initiators of the creation of the OUN-B Revolutionary Leadership (1940). From April 1941, he was the second-in-command of the OUN-B under Stepan Bandera. On June 30, 1941, at the National Assembly in Lviv, he declared the Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood and was elected prime minister. On July 4, 1941, he was arrested by the Nazis and held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for more than three years, including the death bunker at Zellenbau.
In 1944, he was placed under house arrest. Later, he fled to the American occupation zone, having been seriously wounded in the arm during the escape. The group that helped organize the escape included the underground member “Mukha,” the future wife of Yaroslav Stetsko, Hanna Muzyka (Yaroslava Stetsko). They married in 1946 and lived together for 40 years.
After the war, Yaroslav Stetsko settled in Munich, Germany, where he lived until the end of his life. In 1946, he became the head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), an association of political organizations of different nations to fight the Soviet regime. In 1954, Stetsko’s mandate was extended, and he remained the leader of the ABN until he died in 1986. At its height, the ABN included representatives of 35 nations enslaved by the Russians.
The most notable successes of the ABN were signing agreements with the Chinese Anti-Communist League on cooperation, establishing an ABN mission in Taipei (Taiwan), and participating in the founding of the World Anti-Communist League in Tokyo in 1970. The European Freedom Council was founded on his initiative.
Stetsko was a charismatic person. He knew how to win over his interlocutors and spoke Polish, Latin, Greek, German, English, and Italian. He traveled halfway around the world and met with leaders of many countries, including Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Francisco Franco, Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Chiang Kai-shek, and many others. In every conversation with them, he insisted on the need for the democratic world to unite its efforts to confront the Soviets. He expressed his thoughts in several works, among which are “The Ukrainian Liberation Concept,” “The International State of Affairs and the Ukrainian Cause,” “Rebellion Against Materialism,” and “Strength is the Main Argument Against Russia.”
After Stetsko’s death on July 5, 1986, his wife, Yaroslava Stetsko, became the next head of the ABN.
