BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN

ANDRIY LIVITSKY

b. 9 April, 1879, Zolotonosha county, Poltava gubernia, d. 17 January, 1954 in Karlsruhe, Germany

Livitsky was a Ukrainian political leader, and head of the UNR government. Livitsky graduated from the law faculty of Kiev University, where he was president of the student hromada in Kyiv. He began his nationalist activity in 1901, when he joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, and became head of the Lubni branch.

Livitsky was arrested in 1905 for his political activity; from 1905 to 1920 he was one of the leading members of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. In 1918 he was instrumental in the uprising against the Hetman government, and under the UNR Directory he chaired the commission for the convening of the Labor Congress. In April 1919 he became the minister of justice and deputy prime minister of the UNR government. In October 1919, as head of the diplomatic mission in Poland, he oversaw the negotiations for an alliance against Soviet Russia between the UNR and the Polish government; his activity culminated in the Treaty of Warsaw.

In 1920 Livitsky became head of the UNR government and went with it into exile in Tarnow, Poland. In 1921 the remaining institutions of the UNR went into exile; from 1921 to 1926 Livitsky worked closely with the leader of the Directory, Symon Peltiura. After Petliura’s death in 1926 Livitsky succeeded him as vice-president of the Directory and became head of the UNR Armed Forces, and from then headed the UNR government-in-exile.

With the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR, the Germans confined Livitsky to Warsaw, and in 1945 Livitsky reactivated the UNR government-in-exile. In 1948 he was instrumental in the organization of the Ukrainian National Council, at whose first session he was elected president-for-life of the UNR government-in-exile. He died in 1954, and the UNR government-in-exile ceased to exist only after the declaration of Ukrainian independence from the USSR in 1991.