Oleksiy Konoval: Public figure, publicist and long-time head of the Ivan Bahryany Foundation

In 1959, the new board of the Chicago branch of ODUM was headed by Oleksiy Grigorovich Konoval. During this period, the Young ODUM was organized. Work with the Young ODUM and adults took place in swarms regularly, every week. The educators were Oleksiy and Vasyl Konovaly, Halyna Boyko (Hrushetska), Maria Shkrebets, Stefa Kovalchuk, Vira, Nina and Olena Lukash, Tanya Sukhovyi, Vira Gorb, Yaroslav Merkulo, Viktor Bilous, Dmytro Hrushetsky, Oleksiy Poshyvanyk, Petro and Ivan Ivashchenko, Yevhen Tkalich and Oksana Maslovska.

On March 20, 1960, the rector of the Church of St. Sophia, Father Mykola Lytakivskyi, together with the counterdeacon M. Pokotylenko, consecrated the branch flag. On December 11 of the same year, Fathers Fedor Biletsky and Mykola Litvakovskiy dedicated the ODUM house.

At the 10th Congress of ODUM USA in New York in 1960, the Chicago branch was presented with a temporary bust of the Chief Ataman of the UNR troops, Symon Petliura. Since then, with the exception of one year, it has remained in the Chicago branch.

At the end of 1964, the branch, thanks to the efforts of Danylo Zavertayl, created the ODUM bandurist ensemble, which was led by bandurist and composer Hryhoriy Kytasty. The ensemble consisted of 38 bandurists. The group first performed at the Shevchenko Concert on April 4, 1965 at the Chopin School. The group of bandurists of the branch — Oleksiy Poshyvanyk, Petro and Ivan Ivashchenko, Ivan Serbu and Oleh Maslovsky — continued to perform repeatedly at events and celebrations of Ukrainian organizations in Chicago.

The ODUM branch in Chicago also actively supported the magazine "Young Ukraine". Among the representatives of the publication were Pavlo Konoval, Ivan Kozatsky, Danylo Zavertaylo and Oleksiy Konoval. Thanks to their work, the Chicago magazine had the largest number of subscribers.

The report on the branch's activities stated: "...The work of the branch in Chicago has been revitalized from year to year thanks to the energetic work of the branch heads Oleksandr Luppo, Pavlo Konoval, Volodymyr Fil, Viktor Bilous, Oleksiy Konoval, Oleksiy Poshivynik, Vasyl Konoval and Danylo Savertail - the indispensable organizer of the branch, members of the branch board and individual members of the branch, such as Ivan Kozatsky, Vadym Mishalov, Maria and Polina Martynovych, Anatoliy Luppo, Hrytsko Len', Leonid Gyubner, Borys Sherstyuk, Ivan, Vira and Olena Lukash, Taras Kokhno, Dmytro Hrushetsky, Hryhoriy Melnyk, Halyna Boyko, Petro and Paraska Savertailo, Yaroslav Merkelo, Stefa Kovalchuk, Vasyl Konoval, Maria Shkrebets, Mykola Kalyuzhny, Mykhailo Kuzhil, Leonid Lytus, Katya Shchybrya, Yuriy, Olya and Vira Gorb, Lida Romanenko, Vira Tarasenko, Olena Pavelko, Maria Pavlivets, Makar Miskevych, Natalka Kolishynska, Volodymyr Kosogor, Mykola Skyba, Lyudmila Revenko, Valya Poshivanyk and many others. Every year, since the very beginning of the branch's existence, a New Year's meeting has been organized. On the 15th anniversary of the branch's existence, a new board was elected, headed by Vasyl Konoval. It included people who had recently been members of the Young ODUM... ”

In 1974–1985, Oleksiy Konoval taught Ukrainian language, literature and history at the Ukrainian Studies School at the Orthodox Parish of St. Volodymyr. For several years, he was the director of this school.

Oleksiy Konoval was also associated with the activities of the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party. He was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the URDP at five party congresses.

The URDP emerged after World War II around Ivan Bahryany and his like-minded people. Its activities were initially concentrated in the American zone of Germany, and later spread to the English and French zones. The newspaper “Ukrainian News”, which began to be published at the end of 1945, became one of the press organs of this environment.

In his materials, Oleksiy Konoval wrote about the history of post-war Ukrainian emigration and the activities of the URDP. In particular, he noted:

“…during World War II, many families of the persecuted, persecuted, dispossessed and starving left Ukraine in 1933 and after the war ended up in the territory of Austria and Germany. According to the agreement of the USA, England and the USSR in Yalta, people from the eastern and central regions of Ukraine, which were part of Soviet Ukraine, were subject to forced repatriation from the West to the “homeland”, to the Soviet Union. Ukrainians from Galicia and the lands that were under Poland until 1939, and the “old emigration”, people who emigrated with the UNR government after World War I, were not subject to repatriation. Therefore, the situation of “easterners” and “westerners” of Ukraine differed.

In 1946, Ivan Bahryanyi wrote a pamphlet “Why I Don’t Want to Return to the USSR”, which, thanks to Ukrainians in the American army, was transferred to the USA, translated into English and handed over to influential US senators, the British government and General Eisenhower, who, with the help of his soldiers, forced people to go to their “homeland”. After that, the situation changed a little, they stopped forcibly taking them to repatriation camps, but during “screenings” people were thrown out of the DP camps as people who had been forcibly taken to work in Germany. Ivan Bahryanyi and his friends began publishing the newspaper “Ukrainian News” in New Ulm, Germany, and soon created a new party called the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (URDP), which included a large number of conscious elements from the central and eastern regions of Ukraine, the so-called “Easterners” at the time, people from Greater Ukraine. They were somewhat prejudiced against by people from the western regions of Ukraine, members and supporters of Ukrainian nationalist circles.

The activities of the URDP were initially concentrated in the American zone of Germany, and later spread to the English and French zones. The newspaper “Ukrainian News”, which began to be published at the end of 1945, became the voice and defender of Soviet emigration – against forced repatriation, or camp “screenings” (checks of where a person came from – from the East or Galicia), or regarding measures to leave for new settlements in other countries, overseas. For many members of the URDP, the doors of departure to the USA, Canada, Belgium, France, Argentina, Australia, England, Brazil, Venezuela and other countries of the world opened. In those countries, they created their own Regional Committees of the URDP or OURDP in the fifties and continued to maintain contact with their headquarters, which was located in Novy Ulm, where Ivan Bahryany, the party leader, and most of the leadership members lived with their family. Through the efforts of the members of the Ukrainian Democratic Party of Ukraine (UDPU), the Association of Democratic Ukrainian Youth (ODUM) was established in New York on July 18, 1950, in the USA, and later ODUM was established in Canada, England, Australia, Germany and Belgium. In the last four countries, after ten years of activity, ODUM ceased to exist due to the departure of active ODUM members to the American continent…

At that time, the Democratic Association of Former Soviet Repressed Persons (DOBRUS) was established in the USA, and in Canada, the Union of Ukrainians - Victims of Russian Communist Terror (SUZHERO), the Symon Petliura Legion, the UNRadi Assistance Society, the ODUM Friends Society (TOP) and the Ivan Bahryany Foundation. The URDP and its aforementioned sister organizations published a number of valuable books in Ukrainian and English about collectivization, dispossession, arrests and exile to Siberia, the Famine of 1933, because they were visual evidence of the tragic years of communist rule in Ukraine.

Decades passed outside of Ukraine, and the older active generation in the URDP and its sister organizations began to slowly depart to another world. The first to cease its existence was DOBRUS, then SUZHERO and the Symon Petliura Legion, and at the end of May 2000, the members of the URDP party decided to also cease its existence, and to direct the rest of their energy, attention and finances into the activities of the Ivan Bahryany Foundation to help independent Ukraine stand on its own feet. The party believed that it was not worth transferring its activities to Ukraine, where there were already too many parties, many of which had the same ideas as the URDP.

In 2000, Oleksiy Konoval began editing the publication “News of the Ivan Bahryany Foundation”. The publication was received, in particular, in Lokhvytsa, Myrhorod, Dnipro, Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine.

In parallel with the activities of the URDP and its affiliated organizations, their press and archival heritage was being formed. Archives and yearbooks of the publications "Ukrainian News", "Ukrainian Prometheus", "We Will Return Again!", "Our Struggle", "Our Positions", "Shturm", "New Days", "Young Ukraine" and others were transferred to the US Library of Congress in Washington, the Ukrainian Museum in Chicago, the UVAN archive in New York, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Immigration Historical Research Center at the University of Minnesota, the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Center in Winnipeg, the Symon Petliura Library in Paris and other institutions.