Zinovyi Knysh.ZUNRO: West Ukrainian National Revolutionary Organization.Toronto, 1974

“She was born in the twilight of emigrant intrigues and speculations, whispered by the red devil…”

Zinoviy Knysh. ZUNRO: The West Ukrainian National Revolutionary Organization: A Historical and Political Study.

Toronto: Sribna Surma, 1974. — Printed by Kiev Printers Ltd., 860 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario.

Cloth-bound in orange-tan cloth with dark red lettering: the author’s name and title on the top cover, title along the spine; back cover plain. The cloth of the top cover has dark stains and uneven toning, dark spots along the edge of the spine and on the top corner; the back cover has light marks at the top left. The text block is tight, the paper is white and clean. The title page bears two stamps: a round one with a portrait of the poet — “Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society, Chicago, Illinois — USA” and a rectangular one — “J. T. Iwanetz M.D.S.C., 713 East 142nd Street, Dolton, Illinois 60419”; the impressions show through on the reverse. Condition: good.

Lifetime edition. The book has historical and cultural value and is of collector’s interest.

INFORMATION

The study of ZUNRO — the West Ukrainian National Revolutionary Organization of the second half of the 1920s, which the author presents as a reaction to “Zmianyvykivstvo” and pro-Soviet sentiment in Western Ukraine and among the military emigration. In the preface, he admits that a complete history of ZUNRO is unlikely to be written: almost all its members have died, leaving nothing behind, and the living remain silent. The book’s sections: Ukraine ten years after the Great War and the UVO’s fight on two fronts; ZUNRO’s criticism of West Ukrainian citizenship, particularly UNDO; the 1928 trial of the Lviv gymnasium students — fifteen defendants from Sniatyn and Kolomyia; press reviews after the trial. On p. 286 is included a separate speech by the former secretary of the UPRP Secretariat in Lviv and editor of “Hromads’kyi Holos” about the 1927 elections.

Zinoviy Knysh (1906–1999) — a lawyer and activist of the UVO and OUN, one of the leading chroniclers of their history. Born in Kolomyia, he earned a doctorate in law from Lviv University in 1930; from 1924 — in the UVO, arrested three times by Polish authorities; from 1949, he lived in Canada, where he organized and funded the Sribna Surma publishing house. ZUNRO stands alongside his other Toronto works on the UVO and OUN, such as “At the Origins of Ukrainian Organized Nationalism” (1970).

An edition by the author’s own publishing house, printed at the Kiev Printers in Toronto. The copy has Chicago origins: the title page bears a stamp of the Chicago Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society and a stamp with an address in Dolton, a suburb of Chicago.