Personality of Yuriy Kosach in the ukrainian national liberation movement

Abstract

The purpose of the researchis to study Yu. Kosach’s influence on the social and political processes in Volyn Voivodeship, which were connected with the organizational formation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1920 – 1930, reconstruction of the image of Yu. Kosach as the founder of the nationalist underground organizational network in Volyn, the study of his political views evolution. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of objectivity, historicism, systematicity, scientificity. The following methods have been used: comparative, statistical, synchronous, diachronic and comparative analysis. The scientific novelty is that the author managed to reconstruct the image of Yu. Kosach as an active participant in the National Liberation Movement, a leader and founder of the OUN organizational network in Volyn for the first time; there has been analysed the personal composition of the OUN small groups: the first threes and fives in Kovel region; information on birth date and reasons for forced emigration have been clarified. The Conclusion. Yu. Kosach was born into the renowned Drahomanov-Kosach family, he developed as a creative and charismatic person. After graduating from the first Józef Pilsudski Gymnasium in Lviv in 1928 successfully, he entered the Faculty of Law of the University of Warsaw. While studying at the University he began to support the idea of the Ukrainian state revival actively. Due to an active communication with D. Dontsov, A. Livytsky, B. Kravtsiv and other participants of the National Liberation Movement, Yu. Kosach was convinced that there was a drastic need to prepare and implement the national revolution. The ideology of the Ukrainian integral nationalism could be traced clearly in the work, written by Yu. Kosach. He tried to implement his own political views into practice by creating the first OUN headquarters in Volyn. Owing to his efforts, the first nationalist underground network was established in Kovel, and later on, in the territory of Volyn Voivodeship Yu. Kosach was persecuted by the Polish police, which forced him to emigrate in 1933. In the future, he didn’t have a direct connection with the nationalist underground, but Volyn leadership that he founded increased in number and took an active part in the National Liberation Movement.