Symon Vasylyovych Petliura (Ukrainian: Си́мон Васи́льович Петлю́ра, Russian: Симо́н Васи́льевич Петлю́ра; May 10, 1879 – May 25, 1926) was a publicist, writer, journalist, Ukrainian politician, statesman of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and national leader, who led Ukraine's struggle for independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917 (1918-1921).

On May 25, 1926 Petliura was slain with five shots from a handgun in broad daylight by the Russian anarchist of Jewish origin Sholom Schwartzbard in the center of Paris.

Petliura has evoked contradictory judgments; he has been seen as a "freedom fighter who tried to protect Jews", a "bloody anti-Sovietterrorist who tried to create hatred between Ukrainians and Russians" and he has been held responsible for pogroms.

Volodymyr Kyrylovych Vynnychenko (Ukrainian: Володимир Кирилович Винниченко, July 26, 1880 – March 6, 1951) was a Ukrainianwriter, playwright, artist, political activist, revolutionary, politician, and statesman. Vynnychenko is recognized in Ukrainian literature as a leading [Modernist literature|modernist writer]] in prerevolutionary Ukraine, who wrote short stories, novels, and plays, but in Soviet Ukraine his works were proscribed, like that of many other Ukrainian writers, from the 1930s until the mid-1980s. Prior to his entry onto the stage of Ukrainian politics, he was a long-time revolutionary activist, who lived abroad in Western Europe from 1906-1914. His works reflect his immersion in the Ukrainian and Russian revolutionary milieu, among impoverished and working-class people, and among emigres from the Russian Empire living in Western Europe.

Biography

Vynnychenko was born in Yelisavetgrad (Kirovohrad), the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire in a family of peasants. His father Kyrylo Vasyliovych Vynnychenko earlier in his life was a peasant-serf has moved from a village to the city of Yelisavetgrad where he married a widow Yevdokia Pavlenko (nee: Linnyk). From her previous marriage Yevdokia had three children: Andriy, Maria, and Vasyl, while from the marriage with Kyrylo only one son Volodymyr. Upon graduating from a local public school the Vynnychenko family managed to enroll Volodymyr to the Yelyzavetgrad Male Gymnasium (today is the building of the Ukrainian Ministry of Extraordinary Situations). In later grades of the gymnasium he took part in a revolutionary organization and wrote a revolutionary poem for which was incarcerated for a week and excluded from school. That did not stop him to continue his studying as he was getting prepared for his test to obtain the high school diploma (Matura). He successfully took the test in the Zlatopil gymnasium from which obtained his attestation of maturity.

Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky (Ukrainian: Михайло Сергійович Грушевський; Chełm, 29 September [O.S. 17 September] 1866 – Kislovodsk, 26 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. He was the country's greatest modern historian, foremost organizer of scholarship, leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, head of the Central Rada (Ukraine's 1917–1918 revolutionary parliament), and a leading cultural figure in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1934.

Biography

Mykhailo Hrushevsky was born on September 29, 1866 in a Ukrainian noble family (according to Timothy Snyder, his mother was Polish)[1] of religious and humanist scholars in city of Chełm, in the Lublin Governorate of the Russian Empire (in present-day Poland). Hrushevsky grew up in the foothills of the Caucasian mountains in Stavropol and Vladikavkaz. His spiritual native land became Podolia in the area of the village of Sestrynivka, Podolia Governorate, where his mother (Hlafira Zakharivna Okopova) was born, and where her father was a local Russian Orthodoxpriest. In the same village she married the professor of the Kiev Ecclesiastical Seminary, Serhiy Fedorovych Hrushevsky. Serhiy Hrushevsky's father was a highly decorated official (his awards included the two Orders of Saint Anna and the Bronze Cross, and a title of nobility). Fedir Hrushevsky was a graduate of the history department of the Kiev University and later personally blessed his grandson when he was enrolling into the Saint Vladimir University in Kiev.

 Kost Voyevidka was born in the family of Lev Voyevidka in Prague on July 5, 1891. He obtained a medical education and Doctor of Medicine.

Kost Voyevidka was not only a brave warrior of the Kish of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (Ukrainski sichovi striltsi [USS]), but also a savior. There was a division affiliated to the Kish for taking care of sick people. The doctors of the Kish were Dr. Ivan Rykhlo, Dr. Kost Voyevidka in 1914, Dr. Volodymyr Bilozor in 1915 and 1917, and Dr. Volodymyr Shchurovskyi in 1916. Some time later Dr. Voyevidka organized a hospital and taught medical and nursing personnel for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

He was a chief physician of the Kish of the Legion of USS in February 1915. After the reorganization of the Legion into the regiment in 1916, Dr. Beliai organized the service of the kurin doctors of the regimental sanitary chief. He was replaced by Dr. Kost Voyevidka.

Ira Malaniuk was born on January 29, 1919 in Stanislaviv, which at that time was part of Poland. Today, this is the city of Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine.

As a young 16 year-old, Ira Malaniuk began taking opera voice lessons at the Music Conservatory in her home town.

“I cannot say, where the beginnings of my love of opera were. Already in childhood, they shone for me like a guiding star. Although, in all truth, there was a female opera singer in our family, that reached world wide fame – Salomea Kruszelnicka. She was the daughter of my paternal grandmother’s brother, in short my father’s cousin. Our paths never crossed – I never met Kruszelnicka, never saw her peform on stage, but perhaps some drop of her artistic blood courses through my veins.”