Yaroslavyn Sydir.The Liberation Struggle in the Western Ukrainian Lands in 1918–1923.Philadelphia, 1956

"Let iron and blood judge us!" — General Pavlenko's order to the army in response to the proposal of the Entente mission.

Sydir Yaroslavyn [Isidor Sokhotsky]. The liberation struggle in the Western Ukrainian Lands in 1918–1923 / dust jacket by the artist Petro Andrusiev.

Philadelphia: published by the circle of supporters, 1956. — 183 pp.: illus., diagrams. — Printed by the America Publishing House, 817 North Franklin Street, Philadelphia 23, Pa.

Publisher's dust jacket of brown paper: a two-color composition by Petro Andrusiev — a soldier holding a flag with the Lviv lion and a flagpole with a trident in a radiant circle, against the silhouette of a city. Soiling and creases on both sides, rubbing along the edges, small tears and paper losses along the spine, loss of a small fragment in the upper left corner of the front cover. The text block is firm, the pages are clean, with natural yellowing of the paper along the edges. A pencil mark "3.—" in the upper right corner of the dust jacket. Condition: good.

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

INFORMATION

The narrative covers the period from the final decades of Austrian Galicia to the decision of the Council of Ambassadors on March 14, 1923. Separate chapters are devoted to Yuliyan Romanchuk, the "forgotten statesman" — President and dictator of the ZUNR Yevhen Petrushevych, the November Uprising and the Constituent Assembly, Transcarpathia, and the Galician Army, its formation, organization, and actions. The book concludes with the chapter "Detailed Explanations of Photographs of Political and Military Leaders" — essentially a biographical dictionary of ZUNR figures. The illustrations include portraits of Petrushevych, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, Fr. Avgustyn Voloshyn, a photograph of the State Secretariat of Military Affairs under Colonel Vitovsky, as well as diagrams of the demarcation lines of Barthelmy, Botti, and Delvig, and a map of the situation in Ukraine before the capture of Kyiv. In the preface, the author explains that part of the text consists of his revised articles from 1950–1955.

Sydir Yaroslavyn — pseudonym of Fr. Isidor Sokhotsky (1895–1977), a Greek Catholic priest, historian, and full member of the NTSh. Born in Lany in the Bibrichyna region, he served in the Ukrainian Galician Army in 1918–1920, was consecrated as a bishop in Lviv in 1923 by Bishop Yosyp Botchan, and settled in Philadelphia after World War II. He wrote about the November Uprising and the Galician Army as a participant, not an outside observer.

The book had no publisher: it was published at the expense of the "circle of supporters" and printed at the press of the Ukrainian daily newspaper America in Philadelphia. The dust jacket was designed by Petro Andrusiv (1906–1981) — a painter and graphic artist of historical themes, who had lived in the same city since 1949. In the Ukrainian SSR, the topic of the ZUNR and the Galician Army was restricted, so this edition remained for a long time one of the few available sources; it is still regularly cited in research on Petrushevych, the Galician political elite, and the November Uprising.