ZINKEVYCH, OSYP STEPANOVYCH, pseudonyms Petro Varnak, Bohdan Arei, Petro Yakubiak (b. January 4, 1925, in the village of Mali Mykulyntsi, now Sniatyn raion, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast)
Chairman of the board of the Ukrainian independent publishing house “Smoloskyp,” member of the Washington Helsinki Guarantees Committee for Ukraine.
Born into a peasant family. His father, Stepan, was a soldier of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and was captured by the Russians in 1914 during the battles for Makivka. He was held prisoner in Mariupol, from where he escaped with a group of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen to Kyiv. He served in the military formation of Colonel Yevhen Konovalets’s Sich Riflemen, whose headquarters was located at what is now 24 Artema Street. After World War I, he married Petronelia Hrybivska. Both were active in Ukrainian public life, and Osyp, at a very young age, became a member of the youth wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
In 1944, during battles with Kovpak’s partisans in the Carpathians, the Germans captured Osyp’s father along with eleven other Ukrainian peasants in Kosiv and executed them all as hostages.
The war separated Osyp from his mother and sister, Natalka. He was involved in the capture of Prague. During a bombing raid, he was buried under the ruins of a destroyed building, and his comrades believed him to be dead. After several days of digging, he was found barely alive. After the war, his mother and sister, who were in West Germany, learned of Osyp’s death and held a memorial service for the repose of his soul. Several months later, he appeared, alive, on the doorstep of their camp dwelling in Karlsfeld, near Munich.
Zinkevych studied at a teacher’s seminary in a refugee camp, graduating with a teaching diploma. Life in post-war Germany did not suit him, and he decided to move illegally to France. He was arrested by the French police at the border for being without a passport. After holding him in jail for a week, the authorities offered Zinkevych a choice: deportation back to Germany or a one-year work contract in France. He chose a coal mine in northern France. After an explosion in the mine, he was trapped underground for 36 hours.
In 1949, Zinkevych made his way to Paris. As a refugee, he received an international scholarship for education and, that same year, enrolled in the Paris Institute of Industrial Chemistry, from which he graduated in 1954. He worked as a chemist in Paris and was active in student organizations—the Ukrainian Student Hromada, “Zarevo,” and CeSUS (Central Union of Ukrainian Students).
He participated in Ukrainian cultural life. In the Paris newspaper “Ukrainske Slovo” [Ukrainian Word], he and other students founded a page called “Smoloskyp” [The Torch], which later became an independent journal. A group of students interested in life in Soviet Ukraine obtained periodicals and books from Ukraine to stay informed about all cultural and political affairs in the homeland in the post-Stalin era.
During the Khrushchev Thaw, people from Ukraine began to travel to the West. The students never missed an opportunity to meet with Soviet delegations and athletes to spread, as they put it, the “bacillus of freedom,” although these groups were closely monitored by KGB agents. After the 1952 Olympic Games, Zinkevych and a friend deliberately checked into a hotel to talk with the runner Volodymyr Kuts during dinner. They asked him why there was no separate Ukrainian Olympic team. In broken Ukrainian, Kuts replied, “What are you doing here? Demand it, and we will compete for Ukraine.” And so the students created the “Ukrainian Olympic Committee in Exile” in Paris. Subsequently, until the declaration of independence, they held protests at the Olympic Games advocating for Ukraine’s independent participation in international sports competitions.
In 1951, Zinkevych married Nadiia Naorlevych, who was studying in Great Britain at the time. In 1956, he moved to the USA with his wife and two children, where his sister, mother, and his wife’s parents were already living. Like every immigrant, Zinkevych signed a document promising to be a law-abiding American citizen, but he already knew he would work for Ukraine. On his third day, he got a job in a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He later changed jobs several times and, for 15 years before retiring, worked as the director of a chemical research laboratory. Meanwhile, Soviet propaganda, citing his profession, spread information that he was supposedly working with poison gases, with which he never had any connection.
After moving to the USA, Zinkevych continued to publish the journal “Smoloskyp.” In 1960, the periodical became independent, and from 1978, it was also published in English, changing its format from a journal to a newspaper with a fairly large circulation of 15,000 copies.
In 1960, Zinkevych established the “Smoloskyp” publishing house, which later took the name of Vasyl SYMONENKO. The publishing house, which focused primarily on human and national rights in Ukraine, was registered in the USA and Canada as a non-profit and was exempt from all taxes in those countries.
In the early 1960s, Ukrainian *samvydav* literature began to reach the West. “Smoloskyp” published it in Ukrainian and English in its journal, released it as books, and illegally sent these publications back to Ukraine.
For a long time, Zinkevych was the only Ukrainian émigré member of the International Sports Press Association, based in Milan, Italy. He had accreditation for international sporting events—the Olympics (Mexico City ’68, Munich ’72, Montreal ’76), the Universiades in Canada and Japan, and international sports championships in Germany, Greece, and Finland. He met with athletes and journalists who brought *samvydav* materials from Ukraine and took them back to Ukraine. Ukrainian sailors on Soviet ships, which often docked in Copenhagen, Denmark, also did this. Books were sent to Ukraine through tourists. They did not shy away from using the services of Ukrainian communists in Canada, albeit without their knowledge: through their own people, they would slip *samvydav* materials into the luggage of Petro Kravchuk, the head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, because he was not searched. P. Kravchuk, upon learning of this after Ukraine’s independence, was indignant. This is how a group of young people overcame the “Iron Curtain.” In every case, there was a risk. “I believe that all our methods were honest and, no matter what anyone says, we contributed our efforts to making Ukraine independent,” Zinkevych believes.
The most significant publications of “Smoloskyp” on which Zinkevych worked were the five-volume collection of Mykola Khvylovy’s works (one copy of which was brought to Ukraine from Canada by Ivan DRACH), a collection by Les Kurbas, books by Mykhailo OSADCHY, Ihor KALYNETS, Mykola KHOLODNY, Oles BERDNYK, Danylo SHUMUK, Lukian Kary, and Valentyn MOROZ (in Ukrainian and English), the “Ukrainian Heralds” by Viacheslav CHORNOVIL, and especially the publication of materials from the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
When the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords (UHG) was formed in Ukraine on November 9, 1976, Zinkevych, within days, on November 17, using the pseudonym of the editor of the English-language edition of “Smoloskyp,” Yuriy Sayewych—Bohdan Yasen—telephoned the head of the UHG, Mykola RUDENKO, and arranged to support the Group. On that same day, November 17, 1976, the Washington Helsinki Guarantees Committee for Ukraine was established. The committee was headed by the chairman of the “Smoloskyp” board, Dr. Andrew Zwarun (New York), and its members included representatives of committees for the defense of Ukrainian political prisoners in the USA—Andrew Fedynsky (Cleveland), Ulana Mazurkevych (Philadelphia), Dr. Ihor Koshman (New Jersey), Bohdan Yasen (Yuriy Sayewych, Washington), Osyp Zinkevych (Baltimore), Ihor Olshanivsky (Newark), Andrew Karkoc (Minneapolis), Jurij Dejchakiwsky and Andrew Hrushkewytch (Washington), and Marusia Zarycky and Myroslava Stefaniuk (Detroit).
The Committee illegally received from M. RUDENKO, O. BERDNYK, O. MESHKO, Gen. P. GRIGORENKO, and others almost all of the UHG’s memoranda and a number of other documents. They were translated into English and brought to the attention of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Helsinki Commission of the U.S. Congress, and the Canadian Parliament, and were distributed among Western human rights organizations and in the press. Committee representatives served as interpreters for UHG members who ended up in the West during their testimony before the U.S. Congress. They actively participated in various international conferences, maintained constant contact with the U.S. State Department and American congressmen regarding imprisoned UHG members and repression in Ukraine, held press conferences in connection with the trials of UHG members in Ukraine, and on November 16, 1981, organized a commemoration of the 5th anniversary of the UHG in the U.S. Congress. The Committee’s activities were reported worldwide by major Western press agencies, and there were many articles and reports in the foreign press. It was a true information breakthrough: the world learned about an enslaved Ukraine fighting for human rights, for its freedom and independence.
The “Smoloskyp” publishing house published collections of UHG documents and materials compiled by Zinkevych: “The Ukrainian Human Rights Movement: Documents and Materials of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords” (1978); “Information Bulletins of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords” (1981); “The Ukrainian Helsinki Group, 1978–1982: Documents and Materials” (1983), as well as, together with Lesya Verba (Daria Stec) and Bohdan Yasen (Yuriy Sayewych), a collection of UHG documents in English, “The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine: Documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, 1976–1980.”
In 1990, Zinkevych visited Ukraine for the first time after 40 years of emigration, and in 1991, he and his wife, Nadiia, settled in Kyiv, retaining their American citizenship. Continuing his life’s work, in 1992 he moved the “Smoloskyp” publishing house to Kyiv.
To cultivate cadres for the future of Ukraine, the publishing house created a scholarship fund for young political scientists, philologists, and historians. Every May, literary and political science seminars and conferences are held in Irpin, near Kyiv, where winners are chosen in the categories of poetry, prose, essays, drama, children's literature, political science, and history. “Smoloskyp” organizes youth academic conferences, seminars for creative youth, discussions, political games, and literary evenings. By raising funds in the diaspora, “Smoloskyp,” under Zinkevych’s leadership, publishes books by young authors—the winners of its competitions—opening doors for them into academia and literature.
In its “Political Ideologies” series, “Smoloskyp” has published major anthologies: “Conservatism,” “Nationalism,” “Liberalism,” and “Democracy,” as well as a four-volume work by the philosopher Dmytro Chyzhevsky, the collection “The Pereiaslav Council of 1654,” and, in the “Executed Renaissance” series, selected works of writers repressed in the 1920s–30s, the almanac “Moloda Natsiia” [Young Nation], and the journal “Smoloskyp Ukrainy” [The Torch of Ukraine].
The “Smoloskyp” Aid Fund helps former political prisoners, their families, and their children who show aptitude for academic and literary work.
Zinkevych is the organizer and first chairman of the Museum-Archive of Ukrainian Samvydav in Ukraine (1998).
He is a member of the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine (1994) and a member of the editorial board of the newspaper “Literaturna Ukraina.”
In 1997, he was awarded the Order of Merit, III Class.
He was the recipient of the Vasyl Stus Prize in 2009.
He and his wife Nadiia have three sons: Arkadiy, Vitaliy, and Yaromyr.
Bibliography:
I.
“Moloda poeziia v Ukraini 1960–1963 rr. i yii rozhrom” [Young Poetry in Ukraine, 1960–1963, and Its Destruction]. https://museum.khpg.org/1457121207 ; Smoloskyp, July–August 1963; reprint: Literaturna Ukraina, no. 14 (5302), April 9, 2009.
Zinkevych, Osyp. Z heneratsii novatoriv: Svitlychnyi i Dziuba: U dzherel modernoi ukrainskoi krytyky [From the Generation of Innovators: Svitlychny and Dziuba: At the Sources of Modern Ukrainian Criticism]. Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1967. 243 pp.
Kostenko, Lina. Poezii [Poems]. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1968. 357 pp.
Khvylovy, Mykola. Tvory: U 5 t. [Works: In 5 vols.]. Chief ed. Hryhoriy Kostiuk, compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. New York-Baltimore-Toronto: Smoloskyp. Vol. I, 1977, 438 pp.; Vol. II, 1978, 410 pp.; Vol. III, 1982, 506 pp.; Vol. IV, 1983, 664 pp.; Vol. V, 1986, 834 pp.
Nezdolannyi dukh: Mystetstvo i poeziia ukrainskykh zhinok-politv’iazniv v SRSR [Indomitable Spirit: The Art and Poetry of Ukrainian Women Political Prisoners in the USSR]. Album. Bilingual Ukrainian-English edition. Ukrainian text by Bohdan Arei (Osyp Zinkevych), trans. by Bohdan Yasen (Yuriy Sayewych), artistic design by Taras Horalevsky. Toronto-Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1977. 136 pp.
Ukrainskyi pravozakhysnyi rukh: Dokumenty y materiialy kyivskoi Ukrainskoi Helsinkskoi Hrupy [The Ukrainian Human Rights Movement: Documents and Materials of the Kyiv Ukrainian Helsinki Group]. Foreword by Andrew Zwarun, compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. Toronto–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1978. 480 pp.
Berdnyk, Oles. Sviata Ukraina [Holy Ukraine]. Compiled by Bohdan Arei (Osyp Zinkevych). Toronto-Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1980. 206 pp.
The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine: Documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, 1976-1980. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych, trans. by Lesya Verba (Daria Stec) and Bohdan Yasen (Yuriy Sayewych), introduction by Nina Strokata, foreword by Andrew Zwarun. Baltimore-Washington-Toronto: Smoloskyp, 1980. 277 pp.
Informatsiini biuleteni Ukrainskoi Hromadskoi hrupy spryiannia vykonanniu Helsinkskykh uhod [Information Bulletins of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords]: Issues: 1978 – pt. 1, pt. 2, 1979 – March, pt. 1, 1980 – pt. 1, pt. 2. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych, afterword by Nina Strokata. Toronto–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1981. 199 pp.
Kholodny, Mykola. Pro dushu v pisni ta pisniu v dushi [About the Soul in Song and the Song in the Soul]. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. Baltimore–Toronto: Smoloskyp, 1981. 139 pp.
Tykhy, Oleksa. Rozdumy: Zbirnyk statei, dokumentiv, rozdumiv [Reflections: A Collection of Articles, Documents, and Musings]. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. Baltimore–Toronto: Smoloskyp, 1982. 80 pp.
Ukrainska Helsinkska Hrupa. 1978–1982: Dokumenty i materiialy [The Ukrainian Helsinki Group, 1978–1982: Documents and Materials]. Compiled and with a foreword by Osyp Zinkevych. Toronto–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1983. 998 pp.
Martyrolohiia ukrainskykh tserkov. T. I: Ukrainska Pravoslavna Tserkva: Dokumenty, materiialy, khrystyianskyi samvydav Ukrainy [The Martyrology of Ukrainian Churches. Vol. I: The Ukrainian Orthodox Church: Documents, Materials, Christian Samvydav of Ukraine]. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych and Oleksander Voronyn, preface by Metropolitan Mstyslav, foreword by Arkadiy Zhukovsky. Toronto–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1987. 1208 pp.
Martyrolohiia ukrainskykh tserkov. T. II: Ukrainska Katolytska Tserkva [The Martyrology of Ukrainian Churches. Vol. II: The Ukrainian Catholic Church]. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych and Rev. Taras Lonchyna. Toronto–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1985. 839 pp.
Vasyl Stus v zhytti, tvorchosti, spohadakh ta otsinkakh suchasnykiv [Vasyl Stus in Life, Work, Memoirs, and Assessments of Contemporaries]. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych and Mykola Frantsuzhenko. Baltimore–Toronto: Smoloskyp, 1987. 463 pp.
A Thousand Years of Christianity in Ukraine: An Encyclopedic Chronology. Compiled and edited by Osyp Zinkevych and Andrew Sorokowski. Baltimore–Toronto, 1988. 312 pp.
Les Kurbas: U teatralnii diialnosti, v otsinkakh suchasnykiv. Dokumenty [Les Kurbas: In His Theatrical Activity, in the Assessments of Contemporaries. Documents]. Chief ed., intro., notes by Prof. Valerian Revutsky; compiled and with a foreword by Osyp Zinkevych. Toronto–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1989. 1026 pp.
Tysiacholittia khrystyianstva v Ukraini: Urochystosti 1988 roku [The Millennium of Christianity in Ukraine: The 1988 Celebrations]. Chief ed. Osyp Zinkevych, chief of editorial board Dr. Yuriy Soltys. Millennium of Christianity in Ukraine Committee. New York, 1992. 524 pp.
Ukrainske doshkillia: Zbirka dlia chytannia i rozpovidannia ditiam starshoho doshkilnoho i molodshoho shkilnoho viku [Ukrainian Preschool Reader: A Collection for Reading and Storytelling for Older Preschool and Younger School-Aged Children]. Compiled by Nadiia and Osyp Zinkevych. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2002. 558 pp.
“Yak distavavsia ‘samvydav’ na Zakhid” [How ‘Samvydav’ Reached the West]. https://museum.khpg.org/1456494415 ; Source: http://www.istpravda.com.ua/columns/2010/10/6/615/ , October 19, 2010.
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide]. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. 804 pp., 56 ill.; 2nd ed.: 2012. 896 pp. + 64 ill.
Zinkevych, Osyp. Shchodennyk. 1948–1949, 1967–1968, 1971–1976 [Diary. 1948–1949, 1967–1968, 1971–1976]. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2016. 504 pp.
Zinkevych, Osyp. “Oborona ukrainskykh politychnykh v’iazniv” [The Defense of Ukrainian Political Prisoners]. https://museum.khpg.org/1455659108 . From Zinkevych O., Shchodennyk... [Diary...], pp. 418–428. II
Astafiev, Anatoliy. “‘Shynel’ Osypa Zinkevycha” [The ‘Overcoat’ of Osyp Zinkevych]. On his 75th birthday. Literaturna Ukraina, no. 7 (4871), February 17, 2001.
Dubynianska, Yana. “Osyp Zinkevych: povernennia emigranta” [Osyp Zinkevych: The Return of an Émigré]. Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, no. 27 (351), July 21, 2001.
Matusevych, Mykola. “‘Ya pryikhav v Ukrainu zhyty i pratsiuvaty, a ne dozhyvaty viku...’” [“I Came to Ukraine to Live and Work, Not to Live Out My Days...”]. Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, no. 23 (448), June 21, 2003.
Pozniak, Natalka. “Prostyi pensioner: Osyp Zinkevych – vid prostoho soldata do zakhidnoho metsenata” [A Simple Pensioner: Osyp Zinkevych – From a Simple Soldier to a Western Patron of the Arts]. Bez Tsenzury, September 5, 2003.
Melnyk, Olha. “Holova MBF ‘Smoloskyp’ Osyp Zinkevych: ‘V Ukraini ye nad chym i dlia koho pratsiuvaty’” [Head of the Smoloskyp International Charitable Foundation Osyp Zinkevych: “In Ukraine, There Is Much to Work On and People to Work For”]. Ukrainska Hazeta, no. 43 (279), November 20–26, 2003.
Poznyak, Natalya. “Osyp Zinkevych: ‘I’ve Never been Disappointed!’.” Welcome to Ukraine Magazine, no. 1 (28) (2004): 48–50.
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny,” 2006, pp. 248–254. https://museum.khpg.org/1184396349
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide]. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, pp. 252–255; 2nd ed.: 2012, pp. 279–281.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Osyp Zinkevych, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. June 16–20, 2006. Corrected by O. Zinkevych on June 19, 2006. Last read August 8, 2016.
