Dmytro Dontsov

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Dmytro Dontsov
Dmytro Dontsov

Dmytro Ivanovych Dontsov (Ukrainian: Дмитро Іванович Донцов (Шелкоперов)) (b. August 30, 1883 – d. March 30, 1973) was a Ukrainian nationalist writer, publisher, journalist and political thinker whose radical ideas were a major influence on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

[edit] Biography

Dontsov was born in Melitopol in eastern Ukraine to an old cossack officer's family, and in 1900 moved to Saint Petersburg to study law. While there he was arrested due to his involvement in socialist politics, and moved to Vienna in 1909. He then moved to Lviv, where in 1917 he completed a doctorate in law.

During the time of the Ukrainian revolution Dontsov served in the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, where he became the head of the government's official news agency. Between 1919 and 1922 he lived in Switzerland, where he headed the press bureau of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

In 1922 Dmytro Dontsov moved to Lviv. Utterly rejecting the socialism of his youth, his theories came to be considered nationalistic. During this time he edited several journals and wrote numerous articles on Ukrainian nationalism. His writings lambasted the failures of Ukrainians to achieve independence in 1917-1921, ridiculed Ukrainian figures from that era, and proposed a new "nationalism of the deed" and a united "national will" in which violence was a necessary instrument to overthrow the old order. He condemned the Polonophilia, Russophilia, and Austrophilia of various segments of Ukrainian society. In his writings, Dontsov called for the birth of a "new man" with "hot faith and stone heart" (гарячої віри й кам'яного серця) who would not be afraid to mercilessly destroy Ukraine's enemies. His fiery exhortations had a profound influence on many of Ukraine's youth who experienced the oppression of their nation and who were disillusioned with democracy. Although he did not become a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists his writings served as an inspiration for them and helped to create a cultural climate in which their movement could become popular among many of the people and in which a level of violence unknown to the previous generation would be unleashed.

In 1939, on the eve of the Soviet takeover of western Ukraine, Dontsov left Ukraine, living in Bucharest, Prague, Germany, Paris and the United States. In 1949 he moved to Montreal where he taught Ukrainian literature at the French-language Université de Montréal. He died in 1973 in Montreal, and is buried in Bound Brook, New Jersey.

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