Громадсько-політична Та Культурно-просвітня Діяльність Випускника Львівського Університету, Адвоката Івана Кобилецького (1873–1945)
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The article analyzes the socio-political, cultural and educational activities of the Ukrainian lawyer Ivan Kobyletskyi (1873–1945). It is noted that I. Kobyletskyi began his socio-political activity in his student years. While studying at the Faculty of Law of Lviv University, I. Kobyletskyi was the official executive editor of the Lviv student monthly “Young Ukraine: Journal of Ukrainian Youth”, which had a state and socialist orientation. It is shown that I. Kobyletskyi maintained close contacts with Ivan Franko. They maintained friendly communication, corresponded, and participated in social, political, cultural, and educational events together. I. Kobyletskyi collected folklore records, historical documents, written monuments, and old printed books for Ivan Franko, and after his death he took care of honoring the writer's memory and popularizing his work, published memoirs and memorial articles on Franko studies. I. Kobyletskyi took an active part in political, social, and cultural events in Galicia. The initiative and organization of I. Kobyletskyi and his associates to open a public reading room “Enlightenment” in his native village of Yasenytsia-Silna in late 1900 or early 1901 deserves approval. It is emphasized that I. Kobyletskyi was a social democrat by his political beliefs. He was actively involved in socio-political work: he organized workers' circles, provided legal assistance in protecting the rights and interests of workers, and created public reading rooms called “Prosvita” in Galician villages, including his native village. With the proclamation of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, I. Kobyletskyi was appointed military prosecutor of the Third Galician Corps in the Ukrainian Galician Army, where he went through its entire combat path with the army. In the ZUNR, unlike the Ukrainian Council of the UPR and the UPR Directorates, a full-fledged judicial system was established, which took into account military proceedings, which were conducted at various stages by the Supreme Military Tribunal and military regional judges. In the 1900s and 1930s, I. Kobyletskyi was an active member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party in Galicia (USDP). Among the Galician social democrats of the 1920s and 1930s, Kobyletskyi, like his colleague, the famous Galician lawyer and scholar Volodymyr Starosolskyi, belonged to the right wing of the USDP, which was critical of socialist experiments in the Soviet Union, the repressive communist regime and its propaganda, in particular the curtailment of Ukrainianization and the strengthening of Russian chauvinism. I. Kobyletskyi did not accept the Soviet interpretation of Ivan Franko's work, but remained a sincere admirer of his, singling out in his literary heritage early works on Boryslav workers and social and revolutionary themes. I. Kobyletskyi sought to organize the publication of the entire creative heritage of his famous countryman. During the German occupation, I. Kobyletskyi again ran his law office in Drohobych from August 1941. In July 1944, I. Kobyletskyi and his family emigrated to Vienna. He died on January 21, 1945. His wife died in Chicago on July 30, 1956. I. Kobylecki's descendants live in the United States, and his son also became a well-known lawyer. The article concludes that the figure of I. Kobyletskyi belongs to the galaxy of bright personalities in Ukrainian history. The active socio-political, cultural and educational activities of I. Kobyletskyi, a Galician intellectual, lawyer, and patriot, were important for the revival of Ukraine. His professional and public activities were aimed at protecting the rights of his native people, preserving and popularizing the works of Ivan Franko, the memory of the glorious traditions of the past, and raising the level of national consciousness and national spirit of his contemporaries. Taking an active civic position, carrying out cultural, educational, journalistic and human rights activities, I. Kobyletskyi became an expression of the realization of the Ukrainian national idea and the centuries-old aspirations of the Ukrainian people for independence, which testified to his deep love and devotion to his homeland. The professional activity and civic position of I. Kobyletskyi is an example of imitation for modern lawyers of Ukraine. Keywords: Lviv University, administrative law, prosecutor, attorney, lawyer, protection of rights, court, Galicia.
Authors: Львівський національний університет імені Івана Франка, Ihor Boyko, Mykola Kobyletskyi
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4412067860