Stetsko Yaroslav.The Ukrainian Liberation Concept: Works in 2 Volumes.Munich, 1987–1991

“Freedom granted is no freedom! He who frees himself shall be free! He who is freed shall be delivered into captivity!”

Yaroslav Stetsko. Works. Volume One — Volume Two: The Ukrainian liberation concept / edited by the editorial board; latest edition and preparation for print by Dr. V. Kosyk; foreword by Volodymyr Kosyk.

Munich: published by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, 1987–1991. — Vol. 1: 528 pp., portrait; Vol. 2: no fewer than 467 pp. — Published at the expense of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Institute of Political Education in Munich. — © Ukrainischer Verlag München. — Printed by Druckgenossenschaft CICERO eG, München 80. — ISBN 3-926636-00-9 (Vol. 1).

Both volumes are in publisher’s bindings of burgundy faux leather: on the front cover, the OUN emblem is stamped in gold—a trident in a cross against a triangle within a circle—along with the author’s name, the designations “Works, Part 1” / “Works, Part 2,” and the title within a frame of two gold plaques. The bindings are sturdy, with minor scuffing along the edges and occasional light spots on the surface; the text blocks are tight, and the pages are firmly attached. The paper is white, almost without yellowing; there are occasional small foxing spots on the edges of individual pages. Provenance: on the title pages of both volumes is a blue library stamp “Library of A. Chemerynskyi, Doctor of Historical Sciences”; also in purple ink are the library shelfmark “63.3(4Укр)6 С 79” and inventory numbers 268 (Vol. 1) and 270 (Vol. 2). Condition: very good.

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

INFORMATION

The first volume of the collection opens with an article written in Lviv by a twenty-year-old member of the OUN Regional Executive Committee, and concludes with the text “Ideas, People, Struggle,” published under the pseudonym Z. Karbovych in the London-based “Vyzvolnyi Shliakh” in 1954. Between them are “Speech at the Trial in Lviv,” the memoirs “Behind Bars (From the Experiences of a Ukrainian Nationalist Revolutionary, Prisoner in a Polish Prison),” the programmatic articles “A New Social Order,” “Nationalism and Democracy,” “There Can Be No Social Revolution Without a National Revolution,” and a series of articles on the ABN—the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The second volume, arranged thematically rather than chronologically, covers 1954–1982 and is divided into sections: the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, the underground liberation struggle, and international politics; it includes “Ukraine—The Breakthrough Force of the Christian and National Idea,” an analysis of OUN, UPA, and UGV documents from the Regional Executive Committee dating from 1950–53, a speech delivered at the 1962 SUM Congress in Leicester, and articles published under the pseudonyms Yevhen Orlovskyi and Yevhen Prirva.

Yaroslav Stetsko (1912–1986) was the son of a priest from Ternopil; he studied law and philosophy at the Universities of Kraków and Lviv; from 1932, he served on the OUN Regional Executive Committee as an ideological advisor and editor of underground publications; in 1934, he was sentenced by a Polish court to five years’ imprisonment. In April 1941, at the OUN’s Second Great Assembly, he was elected deputy to Stepan Bandera, and on June 30 of that year, the National Assembly in Lviv proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state and elected Stetsko Prime Minister of the Ukrainian State Administration. For refusing to rescind the Act of Restoration, he was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, where he remained in a death bunker until September 1944. From 1946 until his death, he headed the ABN, and from 1968, the revolutionary OUN.

Both volumes were prepared for print by historian Volodymyr Kosyk (1924–2017), a professor at the Ukrainian Free University and the author of the forewords to each. The editions were published in Munich at the expense of the OUN and the Ukrainian Institute of Political Education after Stetsko’s death: the first volume appeared in 1987, and the second in 1991, the year Ukraine proclaimed independence. Print runs of OUN emigré publications were small and were distributed mainly within the organization’s circles; therefore, the complete set of both volumes, especially in their original bindings and without defects, is rarer than individual volumes.