Belarusians on the service of UNR: Oleksandr Maksymovych Zhykhovych (1900-1973). Post scriptum: November’s interrogation in 1953 and the last years of life

Abstract

This article contains the material about one of the eleven Belarusian soldiers of the UNR Army, the student of the Ukrainian Economic Academy in Podebrady (CHSR). After surviving the Second World War in Czechoslovakia, Oleksandr Zhykhovych, in 1953 was summoned for questioning by the Czechoslovak-Soviet Committee of State Security, due to his ties to the Ukrainian political emigration of the interwar years. Among the questions, which were interested to the KDB agents, were: the emigration political organizations at the Academy of Economics and their anti-Soviet activities during 1921-1939; employment of Zhykhovych in Khustov Bank and his contacts with the bank employees; the presence of Belarusian political organizations in the environment of the Ukrainian emigration students of the CHSR; personal Zhykhovych’s contribution (as the chief accountant) in the activities of Transcarpathian publishing houses «UNIO» and «Proboiem». This last question was interested to the KDB agents, mostly, since, in the 1950s a brutal war continued between the Soviets and the Ukrainian nationalists. We must note that the first victim of the Soviet-nationalist confrontation personally for Oleksandr Maksymovych Zhykhovych was the arrest (on the eve of his interrogation) of his stepson – Zdenek Nekhanitskyi (10.08.1928). In 1953, he was the head’s assistant of the power plant station named after May 1 in Trshebonitsi (district of Ostrava), a member of the Communist Party of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic of 1945. It was Zdenek Nekhanitskyi, who suffered a forced arrest, the interrogation of his stepfather and investigation, and handed over to Serhii Knyrevych the interrogation protocol. And today, despite a respectable age, Zdenek Nekhanitskyi is trying to find the most precise answer to the question: how did it happen and why his stepfather, an ethnic Belarusian, spent almost his entire life in the Ukrainian political emigration, both interwar and post-war, and left a remarkable footprint there?

Keywords: Oleksandr Maksymovych Zhykhovych, Ukrainian People’s Republic, intermilitary emigration, Second World War, publishing houses «UNIO» and «Proboiem», postwar years, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic