June 14, 2001 marked the centennial of the birth of Yevhen Konovalets, army colonel of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), military and political figure, as well as head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
The occasion was marked by a mass for the dead celebrated by Archbishop Ihor of Kharkiv and Poltava (photo) at the Chapel of St. Demetrius (Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church) in Kyiv.
Yevhen Konovalets was an outstanding figure of the Ukrainian liberation struggle of 1917-21. He was a capable military leader and organizer. After the revolution’s defeat, Konovalets returned to Lviv from immigration where he proceeded to establish the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainian abbreviation, UVO), simultaneously preparing the ground for OUN that was founded at a February 1929 congress in Vienna. Konovalets was elected OUN’s first leader.
On May 23, 1938, Colonel Yevhen Konovalets was killed by an NKVD agent in Rotterdam (Holland). As a politician, he was principled, diplomatically flexible, and had a keen sense of reality — something his successors at OUN would lack and which would result in a significant number of OUN members collaborating with the Nazis during World War II.
