CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. VOLODYMYR HORBOVYI WITH THE US DIASPORA (BASED ON ARCHIVAL MATERIALS OF THE MANUSCRIPT DIVISION OF THE STEFANYK NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY OF UKRAINE IN LVIV)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of organized assistance of the Ukrainian community in the United States to Ukrainian cause and native land. Particularly, basing on Dr. Volodymyr Horbovyi’s correspondence, the author of the paper provides an overview of collaboration between the representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora with the Ukrainian fighters for independence. The author also defines a major role the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Association of Former Soldiers of the UPA in the United States (Former Members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Inc.) played in establishing the Ukrainian National Foundation Inc. in 1950. The Foundation provided aid not only to the Ukrainian Community in the United States but also to the ones living on the territory of Ukraine, including the former soldiers of UPA who managed to survive and return after imprisonment in soviet concentration camps.
The paper contains the analysis of specific fragments of Dr. Volodymyr Horbovyi’s epistolary legacy. The correspondence gives evidence of Ukrainian diaspora’s contacts with the convicted members of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA during the Cold War. Basing on the correspondence of Dr. Horbovyi’s (1899–1984), who was a member of UVO (the Ukrainian Military Organization) and UPA, an advocate in Warsaw and Lviv show trials of OUN members (1935–1936), and the chairman of the Ukrainian National Committee (1941). Moreover, the author analyzes the issue of the organized aid of the Ukrainian Community in the United States to the Ukrainian cause. Some examples of such assistance are studied on the basis of archival materials from the collection of the philanthropists Omelian and Tetiana Antonovych.
For the first time part of the correspondence of the famous political activist and lawyer Volodymyr Horbovyi with his friends in the United States is published. Two letters of Dr. Horbovyi to his school friend Petro Melnykovych in Detroit, and the letter of Melnykovych to Roman Antonovych (a relative of Volodymyr Horbovyi) from 1975 are published. Moreover, in his letter P. Melnykovych quotes the fragment of Dr. Horbovyi’slast letter to his friends from October 17, 1975.