Native of Pidliaschia and Gatherer of Ukraine (on the 125th anniversary of Tymosh Olesiuk’s birth)

Abstract

The coverage of active members’ performance of the Ukrainian National Revolution is a crucial task for the modern historical science. Tymisch Olesiuk, native of Pidliaschia who continued his work in emigration, was one of the most consistent participants of a struggle for independent Ukrainian state and had proved himself at that time. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the main pages of Tymosh Olesiuk’s life and work, the name of whose is predominantly unknown in independent Ukraine, based on the modern methods and studies, introducing the new documents in scientific usage.

Having elected to be a member of the Central Council of Ukraine at the age of 22, Tymisch Olesiuk prepared the documents for the UPR to the peace negotiations in Brest as well as protected with arms the young Ukrainian state on the streets of Kyiv in January 1918, and later participated into educational institutions’ organization on the north-western Ukrainian lands, was a secretary of a diplomatic mission of the UPR in Poland in preparing the Warsaw Treaty in April 1920. Tymisch Olesiuk organized the Ukrainian students in Poland on behalf of Symon Petliura the Head of Directory of the UPR after the defeat in national liberation struggle; simultaneously he studied different aspects of Ukrainian settlement in the world. From the beginning of the Second World War he actively participated in the Ukrainian national self-government in German-occupied Poland, maintained close contacts with the President of the UPR in exile Andriy Levytskyi. Tymisch Olesiuk as the member of the UPR’s Government made a lot of efforts for Ukrainian life organization in post-war Europe at the end of the Second World War. He moved to the USA in 1947 where he had physical work to earn a living, later he had medical practice and actively participated in civil and political life of the Ukrainian emigration in parallel. Particularly, he was an adviser of the publisher of “The Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies” Volodymyr Kubijovych at the time of significant articles’ preparation regarding that project as well as he eagerly responded to the authors’ requests to review their articles on the subject of Ukrainian studies.

He was the author of such scientific studies as “Social and Political Unification of the Ukrainian Nation”, “Race Nature of the Ukrainian Nation”, “Unification of Ukrainian Blood”, “Map of United Ukraine and Neighboring Friendly Countries”, “Ukrainian Colonial Lands”, “Polissia”, “Pidliaschia”, “About the Origins of the Slavs”, “The west-European and Asian Cossacks”, etc., as well as memoirs “Kamianets – the Golden Wreath” regarding 1918-1919-s.