P. Vovk’s News: Fragments from the Chronicle of One UPA “Wolves” Unit.Lyon; Paris, 1948

“Ukraine Has Always Striven for Freedom” (Voltaire)

P. Novyna. Wolves: Fragments from the Chronicle of a Unit of the UPA “Wolves”.

Lyon; Paris: Published by the OUN Foreign Units, 1948. — 64 pp.: illus. On the verso of the title page: “Proceeds are designated for the liberation struggle fund.” On the back cover: “Reprint of underground materials, 4th ed.; — 01/48.”

Original publisher’s cover of terracotta paper: the front features the title in painted letters and a black-and-white engraving (insurgents in the forest) with the artist’s signature at the bottom left; the back features the OUN’s circular emblem with a trident and sword. The spine is reinforced with a paper strip; the inner folds of the cover and the outer edges of the leaves are reinforced with clear adhesive tape. The cover has creases and tears, with paper loss at the bottom corners and along the bottom edge of the front side; the back has a tear at the top, paper loss in the upper corner reinforced with tape, and a stain at the bottom. The edges of the leaves are frayed, the paper is uniformly yellowed, and there are brown spots on the title page. The text block is secured with a wire staple. The back cover is marked “1700” in pencil, and there is a mark on page 3. Condition: fair.

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

INFORMATION

The chronicle of the Khmelnytskyi Kuren of the UPA “Wolves” in the form of diary entries from August 1944 to November 1945. On Sundays, the unit changes into clean clothes and celebrates with the villagers; at a village meeting, the mobilization of four 18-year-olds into the Red Army is announced; the insurgents carry out an operation against a hostile stanitsa, arrest a Red Army sergeant who does not believe that he is facing Ukrainians, and speak with a platoon of the Polish Home Army—the Polish dialogue is rendered in Cyrillic. The final entry concludes with words about the completion of a raid in the north. The book opens with a political introduction on the collapse of empires after World War I, featuring an epigraph by Voltaire; the text includes photographs, notably a group of SB insurgents at rest.

The author, who wrote under the pseudonym “Novyna,” was probably Mykhailo Savynets (b. 1925), a clerk of the “Wolves-1” sotnia. The “Wolves” Kuren operated in the Khmelnytskyi region: in 1944 it was part of the 2nd Operational Group “Buh,” and later the 6th Operational Group “Sian.” The commanders Karpo and Yastrub mentioned in the entries were probably the sotnia commanders Pavlo Pylypchuk (†1944) and Oleksa Sydoruk (†1945).

Published by the OUN Foreign Units: the book is identified on the back cover as a reprint of underground materials. The title page lists Lyon and Paris, but the book is considered one of the Di-Pi publications—the collection of publications by Ukrainian displaced persons from 1945 to 1954 in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto—and was therefore probably printed in displaced persons camps in Germany. The copy has been preserved in its original illustrated cover.