Makivka, Stepan

Makivka, Stepan [Маківка, Степан], b 11 October 1889 in Koden, Tomaszów Lubelski county, Lublin gubernia, d 24 January 1966 in Lviv. Civic and political leader in Podlachia and Kholm region. After studying history at Kyiv University he served in the sanitation department of the Eighth Russian Army (1915–17). In 1922–8 he was a deputy to the Polish Sejm, where he belonged to the Ukrainian caucus (see Ukrainian Parliamentary Representation). In the 1920s he helped found Sel-Soiuz and Sel-Rob and then its left wing and published (1925–8) Kholm-based newspapers Nashe zhyttia (Kholm) and Nove zhyttia (Kholm). In 1929–36 he was imprisoned by the Poles for his political activity. After Poland’s collapse in 1939 he demanded that the Kholm region and Podlachia be annexed to Ukraine. After the Second World War he settled in Soviet Ukraine, where he wrote journalistic and fictional works and several volumes of memoirs, including Neskoreni kresy (The Indomitable Borderlands, 1954; 2nd ed 1957).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]