Bilinsky, Yaroslav

Bilinsky, Yaroslav [Білінський, Ярослав; Bilyns'kyj, Jaroslav], b 26 February 1932 in Lutsk, Volhynia, d 26 September 2024 in Newark, Delaware, USA. Political scientist. A displaced person after the Second World War, Bilinsky emigrated from Germany to the United States of America in 1951. He completed his studies at Harvard University and Princeton University (PhD 1958). An active member of the Ukrainian Democratic Youth Association, he was one of the efitors of its monthly Moloda Ukraïna (Toronto). Bilinsky briefly lectured at Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania before becoming a professor at the University of Delaware, where he taught among his students a future US President Joe Biden. Between 1984 and 1990 Bilinsky was president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States. His writings deal particularly with the Communist Party and the nationality policy and nationalities problem in the USSR. Bilinsky is the author of The Second Soviet Republic: The Ukraine after World War II (New Brunswick, New Jersey 1964), Endgame in NATO’s Enlargement: The Baltic States and Ukraine (Westport, Conn 1999), and numerous articles in scholarly publications.

[This article was updated in 2026.]