Vassyian, Yuliian

Vassyian, Yuliian [Вассиян, Юліян; Vassyjan, Julijan], b 12 January 1894 in Kolodentse, Zhovkva county, Galicia, d 3 October 1953 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Nationalist ideologue and philosopher. His studies at Lviv University were interrupted by the First World War and by the 1918–19 Ukrainian-Polish War in Galicia, during which he was an officer in the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and Ukrainian Galician Army. After his release from a Polish prisoner of war camp, he studied at the Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian University (1922–4), Prague University (PH D, 1929), and the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute in Prague, and was active in nationalist student groups. As chairman of the Ideological Commission, he was elected to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists Leadership at its founding congress in 1929. After returning to Galicia in 1930, he worked in Peremyshl as an editor of the weekly Ukraïns’kyi holos (Peremyshl) and was imprisoned by the Poles for his political activities (1931–5, 1939). During the Second World War, in 1944, he was imprisoned by the Gestapo. A postwar displaced person in Germany, he emigrated to the United States of America in 1950. Vassyian contributed articles defining nationalist ideology to Natsional’na dumka, Rozbudova natsiï, and Samostiina Ukraïna. Some of his philosophical essays, dealing with Ukrainian history, the Ukrainian national character, and the role of the individual, were published posthumously in the collections Odynytsia i suspil'nist' (The Individual and Society, 1957), Suspil'no-filosofichni narysy (Socio-Philosophical Essays, 1958), and Tvory (Works, 1972). Many of his manuscripts remain unpublished.

Taras Zakydalsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]