Turning the pages back... April 3, 1888 (03/29/98)

Turning the pages back...

April 3, 1888

Few know much about the history of Kuban, a region that since the Great Famine of 1932-1933 has been withering as a Ukrainian ethnographic territory.

An interesting figure in that history, Vasyl Ivanys, was born on April 3, 1888, in Stanytsia Nastasivska, Temriuk district, about 100 kilometers west of Krasnodar and just across the isthmus from Kerch. He studied economics at the Moscow Commercial Institute, then graduated with a degree in engineering from the Novocherkask Polytechnical Institute in 1915.

After the February Revolution in 1917, Ivanys became active in the so-called "Kuban faction" of pro-Ukrainian activists who demanded independence for the region and supported the Central Rada in Kyiv. Ivanys was one of the 46 "horodovyky" (non-Cossack representatives) in the Kuban Legislative Council established in January 1918 to function as the territorial government with its capital in Katerynodar.

In 1919, Ivanys served as trade and commerce minister in Prime Minister Pavlo Kurhansky's Cabinet. In November of that year, the tsarist Russian General Aleksandr Denikin mounted a coup in an attempt to impose a regional dictatorship, but this only prompted Kuban Cossack forces to stop fighting the Bolsheviks.

Coupled with Denikin's losses to Nestor Makhno in Ukraine, this resulted in the complete demoralization of his Volunteer Army (VA) and thus weakened its hold on the Caucasus. The Kuban Territorial Council convened on January 1, 1920, to remove the pro-Denikin puppet administration.

Three days later, Ivanys was asked to serve as prime minister and form a new government. In March, Katerynodar had to be evacuated in the face of a Bolshevik advance, and when Georgia refused to intern Kuban's troops, they were transferred to the Crimea.

In May, the Kuban army's commander, Gen. Mikhail Bukretov resigned, and the duties of military otaman were assumed by Ivanys. In order to save the remnants of his fighting force, in July Ivanys was forced to sign over command to tsarist Gen. Piotr Wrangel, who had taken over as leader of the VA.

In August Ivanys dispatched a delegation to Warsaw to sign an agreement with the Ukrainian National Republic's government, and in November the contingents of both administrations went into exile. Ivanys emigrated to Czecho-Slovakia and soon joined the local Ukrainian Civic Committees active there.

In 1927 Ivanys became one of the founders of the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Podebrady, Czecho-Slovakia, whose faculty he later joined. In 1932 he became a professor at the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute (UTHI) in Prague, publishing extensively on the natural and industrial resources of Ukraine.

After the second world war, the UTHI was evacuated to Regensburg, Germany, and Ivanys served as its director until his emigration to Canada in 1948. He settled in Toronto, was active in the Shevchenko Scientific Society's Canadian branch and the Orthodox Brotherhood of St. Vladimir.

Vasyl Ivanys died in Toronto on November 28, 1974.

Sources: "Ivanys, Vasyl," "Kuban," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).