18 September marks the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Ivan Vovchuk, a leading figure in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, vice-president of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement, and long-time head of the main board of the Organization for the Defense of the Four Freedoms of Ukraine. Contemporaries know him by this name, although at birth he was named Fedor Ivanovich Vovk; but the underground struggle forced him to slightly modify his own first and last names.
Born in Greater Ukraine, in the village of Ocheretuvate in the Poltava region, he became a vivid example of the fact that Ukrainian nationalism and the Ukrainian nationalist movement are a pan-Ukrainian phenomenon. The family, at that time still Fyodor Vovk, suffered repressions from the Bolshevik authorities, but this did not prevent the gifted young man from realising his talents. In 1926, he graduated from Kharkiv University, and 10 years later, moved to Nikopol, where he was appointed director of a school. Under the influence of members of the OUN Marching Groups, in particular Mykola Klymyshyn, a conscious Ukrainian and talented teacher, Fyodor Vovk joined the ranks of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, revived “Prosvita”, and a little later headed the Nikopol District Leadership of the OUN, maintaining contact with Vasyl Kuk, the National Leader of the OUN of the South-Eastern Ukrainian Lands.
Researching the biography of Ivan Vovchuk, Viktor Rog notes: “In October 1943, under the threat of exposure by the German security service, Vovchuk, his family, and a group of underground fighters were forced to leave for Western Ukraine under the guise of refugees. Since then, having established contact with the top leadership of the OUN-UPA, he has been operating under the pseudonym Ivan Fedorovych Vovchuk. On 11-15 July 1944, Ivan Vovchuk participated in the Meeting of the Ukrainian Main Liberation Council, where he was elected vice-president of the UGVR. In August 1944, Vovchuk crossed into Slovakia and later ended up in Germany, in the Karlsfeld camp near Munich.
In emigration, Ivan Vovchuk worked as an editor of the magazine “Vizvolnaya Polityka” and the magazine “Vizvolnyi Shlyakh”, and was co-opted into the OUN leadership led by Stepan Bandera. On the instructions of the OUN in 1949-1950, Vovchuk headed the Central Representation of Ukrainian Emigrants in West Germany and worked on the editorial board of the weekly “Ukrainian Tribune”. In 1950, he moved to the USA, where he became the editor of the newspaper “National Tribune”, and since 1953, he headed the publishing house “Visnyk” and the Organization for the Defense of the Four Freedoms of Ukraine (OOCHSU).
Ivan Vovchuk left behind a multifaceted worldview heritage, especially relevant for the modern era. Having survived the Second World War, conducting active public and political work during the “Cold War” and foreseeing the future decisive phase of the “hot war” against the Moscow empire of evil, Ivan Vovchuk derived the only possible formula for the future peace, based on the principle of the ABN: “Freedom for nations – Freedom for the individual!”.
He realised its fundamental importance while fighting and working side by side with Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Yaroslav Stetsko, and other OUN leaders.
He considered the Bolshevik empire a “prison of nations,” a “Moscow satanism,” and a great threat to the entire civilized world, both after the end of World War II and in the future.
Ivan Vovchuk, like his associates, clearly realised that, regardless of the name of the state or the colour of the flag, as long as the enslaved peoples remain, Muscovy will retain its imperial essence. He exposed the basic “scraps” on which empires are founded and held: weapons, myths, pseudo-religion and propaganda, prisons, enslavement, terror and fear. All of them were inherent in the Bolshevik system of maintaining power, as, in its time, in the Muscovite tsardom or, in modern times, in Putin’s tyranny. This was often not wanted to be seen and acknowledged, and, in the end, continues to be done in the future, by individual leaders of the civilized world. Instead, they invented hundreds of reasons and explanations, trying to justify or explain the evil that the Kremlin carries within itself, not understanding that any attempts to appease, pacify, democratise, or train the Moscow bear, or, as Vovchuk more aptly noted, the “boar,” will never even have a chance of success.
Today, when we read the theses of his speech to the participants of the 11th meeting of Ukrainians in the USA and Canada, which took place back in 1960, as part of the Captive Nations Week, we realise that Ivan Vovchuk was addressing not only those present at the meeting, but also his descendants. And not only Ukrainians, but also representatives of the current American government and other Western leaders, explaining the formula for achieving true peace, which is now being actively worked on in Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels.
“When so much is said about peace today,” emphasized Ivan Vovchuk, “we can boldly say that the world is not heading for peace, because there can be no peace with Satan. Whoever tries to create peace at the expense of the enslaved will cross out divine laws. Our position in the current situation can be unified – let us tell the US government that we are grateful for its sympathy, but it is not enough to defend the freedom that is already threatened in the world.
Let us say it openly, – Ivan Vovchuk continued his address, – if we want peace, or rather, if they want peace, because we have wanted it for a long time, then the proclamation of the Captive Nations Week must be made the basis of policy and political action, and the sooner this happens, the less grief there will be on earth. Such a policy will make it easier for the nations conquered by Moscow Bolshevism to stand on the ‘feet of their own state’, freeing themselves from the Kremlin’s imperial tutelage, will limit Russia to its ethnographic borders, and then the horrors of war will disappear.
It is Ivan Vovchuk’s final formulation that is the key to the true formula for peace for the entire civilized world, including today, when 65 years have passed since his famous speech. The limitation of Muscovy to its ethnographic borders, the collapse of the “prison of nations”, freedom not only for Ukrainians, Georgians, or Azerbaijanis, but also for Chechens, Ingush, Bashkirs, Tatars, Kalmyks, Yakuts and other hitherto enslaved nations – is the key to the final victory of Ukraine and the establishment of lasting peace.
Another important warning that Ivan Vovchuk addressed to his descendants was the threat of flirting with the so-called “good Russians,” which, unfortunately, is still popular in some circles today. Characterising the Russian opponents of the Bolshevik regime at that time, Vovchuk also looks decades ahead: “Russian opposition movements, despite all their diversity, seek to improve and correct the existing system of the imperial complex of the USSR, seek reforms of the Bolshevik totalitarian empire, but not the collapse of the evil empire, not the creation of independent states of free nations in its vastness.”
A similar phenomenon can be observed today, when some leaders of the civilized world gladly receive representatives of the so-called “Russian democratic opposition”, blindly believing that they are, or will be, better than the current Kremlin dictator. Although having analysed their public speeches, one can firmly believe that they are just as imperialist as their “political opponent”.
Therefore, today, taking into account Ivan Vovchuk’s warnings, the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations, as the successor to the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, appeals to all Western leaders to abandon support for the Moscow pseudo-opposition and to begin a dialogue with representatives of the national liberation movements of the peoples colonized by Moscow, to help free their political prisoners and ensure their sacred right to freedom and the creation of their own independent states.
At one time, the head of the OUN and the President of the ABN, Yaroslav Stetsko, called Ivan Vovchuk “the pride of the revolutionary OUN”. This was a well-deserved recognition, based on the results of many years of work in the ranks of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and in its influential public facades. Ivan Vovchuk’s authority was recognized by all leading figures of the Ukrainian liberation movement, because no matter what area of work he was assigned to, he always demonstrated the features of an effective leader, maintaining his principles and nobility and steadfastly adhering to the principles of the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. But, no less importantly, his comrades saw in him a great visionary, able to look many years ahead, model the future, point out threats and opportunities, and develop complex but precise formulas, in particular, the most important one – the formula of peace and Victory.
