“DAYS ARE PASSING”
In 1921 a collection of Vasyl Vyshyvany’s poems called Mynaiut dni (Days Are Passing) was published in Vienna. These melancholy words reveal the situation of the representative of the Habsburg dynasty after the defeat of the Ukrainian liberation movement.
Petro Karmansky, a Ukrainian writer and member of the ZUNR government, met Vyshyvany in Vienna: “I often ran into this Ukrainian colonel, who was full of dreams, at various Ukrainian functions and holidays. I saw him not simply listening but capturing with his entire soul the melodies and words of the Sich songs, finding there his sole enjoyment after the loss of the recent fairytale of fighting for the Ukrainian state. Our audience, as usual, was not very kind to this victim of youthful impetuousness and dreamy disposition, and he usually stood in a corner lonely and forgotten by everyone, for now he was not wearing the aureole of the Habsburgs, but was simply Colonel Vasyl Vyshyvany, who wore the uniform of the Ukrainian army and a grey overcoat and lived on the miniscule wages of a military man that the emigre government managed to pay.”
On Jan. 9, 1921 an event took place that had a fatal impact on Vasyl’s relations with his family and the political circles around the Directory. The Austrian newspaper Neues Wiener Journal published an interview with Vasyl Vyshyvany, in which he condemned the Polish occupation of Galicia. This sparked a sharp reaction from his father, who was one of the candidates for the Polish throne. In addition, the diplomatic corps of the UNR demanded a retraction from the newspaper.
Vyshyvany also disapproved of certain parts of the article, which had been distorted by the journalist, but he was mostly offended by the words “it was also noted: ‘As the Ukrainian citizen Vasyl Vyshyvany, I cannot and dare not call myself Archduke Wilhelm of Austria.” However, he did not disavow the article.
Vasyl Vyshyvany was left face to face with his “Ukrainian question.” However, Ukrainian monarchist circles sought to promote Vyshyvany as a candidate to the Ukrainian throne, but in the newspaper Soborna Ukraina he denied all such initiatives.
In the following years Vyshyvany set up a business and helped Ukrainian emigres with his earnings. As an authoritative Ukrainian figure, who had not disgraced either his military uniform or his aristocratic name, he organized meetings between Ukrainian political opponents. During World War II he refused to cooperate with the Nazis. He was later kidnapped in Vienna by the Soviet counterintelligence organization SMERSh (Russian for “Death to Spies”) and brought to Kyiv, where he denied all accusations.
Accused of links with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and cooperating with English and French counterintelligence, Habsburg faced a 27-year prison sentence, the verdict handed down by a special council. However, on Aug. 18, 1948, Vasyl Habsburg-Vyshyvany died in the hospital of Kyiv’s Prison No. 1, diagnosed with “pulmonary tuberculosis.”
The Ukrainian writer Karmansky, recalling Colonel Vyshyvany, asked Ukrainian society a question that we still have not managed to answer: “For the sake of what is this noble soul of a former aristocrat suffering, which to its misfortune fell into the eddy of our liberation drama? And will there be many among us who will be able to make a proper assessment of this idealist and dreamer...”
TheDay's FACTFILE
From the correspondence of Karl Habsburg and Vasyl Vyshyvany:
I read with regret in various periodicals different news about Archduke Wilhelm. I regard it as my duty to calm down public opinion with the assurance that, after the collapse of Austria, Archduke Wilhelm did not return home, and all connections between his family home and him have been broken. Both our family and I disapprove of his behavior. Both of my elder sons serve in the Polish army. One of them was wounded in battle near Radekhiv. Finally, I declare that no member of our family solidarizes with the behavior of Archduke Wilhelm.
My father is publicly stating that he and our family neither agree with my actions nor approve of them. This may refer only to my national-political activity because I have not done anything in my private and family life that could evoke my family’s public reaction. As for my national-political activity, I have the honor to state publicly:
“First of all, I am of full legal age on the basis of Ukrainian Civil Law, which I recognize; I am also of full legal age according to family law, which does not oblige me, but possibly obliges my father. All this considered, I do not recognize any guardianship over me and behave in the way I find appropriate.
“Second, I confirm that I do not approve of the entire policy that my family has conducted against the Ukrainian people, doing constant harm to this people for centuries. And therefore this was one of the motives that made me serve the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian republic. And I will fulfill this service to the end, without regard for the position given to me by the Ukrainian legal government and without regard for the fact whether my father or my family likes this or not.
“In any case, after being publicly insulted, I must publicly express my surprise at the fact that my father has succumbed to such a degree to the influence of the Poles, whose role is not noble either with regard to the peoples that are seeking freedom or with regard to those to whom they swore fidelity on their knees.
Vasyl Vyshyvany”
