«A Man Passionately Devoted to the Ukrainian Idea»: on the Question Regarding Biography of the Head of the Black Sea Ukrainian Community in Sevastopol, Viacheslav Laschenko (1875—1953)

Abstract

The Ukrainian national movement of the beginning of the 20th century in Crimea is poorly researched, although at that time Ukrainians constituted the third largest ethnic community among the Crimean population. The article reconstructs main milestones in the biography of one of the leading figures of the Ukrainian national movement in Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet in 1917–1920, public and political activist, writer and poet Viacheslav Lashchenko (1875–1953). He was born in Yelysavethrad (the modern name of the city is Kropyvnytskyi) in the family of Ukrainian intellectuals. Already during his studies at higher educational institutions, V. Lashchenko took an active part in the Ukrainian national movement, in particular, he organized and headed the Ukrainian Student Community in Warsaw. After receiving a historical and philological education, he taught at schools of the Dnieper Ukraine, where the authorities considered him untrustworthy due to his pro-Ukrainian views and transferred him to new jobs several times. In Sevastopol, during the revolution of 1905–1907, V. Lashchenko combined teaching at the gymnasium with participation in the illegal Ukrainian patriotic circle «Kobzar», which soon he headed. During the revolution of 1917, this organization initiated the creation of the Black Sea Ukrainian Community in the city of Sevastopol, which united several thousand Sevastopol civilians, sailors, officers and soldiers. The community played an important role in the development of the movement for the Ukrainianization of the Black Sea Fleet, most of whose sailors were Ukrainians. V. Lashchenko was elected the first head of the Black Sea Ukrainian Community in Sevastopol. In the summer of 1917, he became a member of the Sevastopol City Council on the list of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, and in the autumn, he probably headed the Ukrainian Council of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies in Sevastopol. During the frequent changes of power in Crimea in 1918–1919, little is known about his activities, and in 1920, during the Wrangel’s regime, V. Lashchenko joined the leadership of the Ukrainian National Democratic Bloc, which proclaimed loyalty to P. Wrangel, the idea of statehood of Ukraine as part of federal Russia and the creation of the Ukrainian army. After Crimea was seizured by the Bolsheviks, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where he engaged in public, creative and, probably, teaching activities. During the Second World War, he emigrated to the USA, but, according to the researcher, he returned to Czechoslovakia, where he died.