Roman Oliynyk-Rakhmanny, Ukrainian Renaissance Man

Roman Oliynyk-Rakhmanny, 84, born in what is now Lviv oblast, passed away late last month in Montreal, after a long illness. He ranked among the celebrated journalists of the Ukrainian diaspora, was a literary critic, historian, Doctor of Philosophy, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko State [currently National] Prize, awarded in 1994 for his three-volume collection of papers, Nuclear Age Ukraine , member of the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine, former member of the OUN and OUN excursion groups in 1941. He was a cofounder and coeditor of the newspapers Chas (Germany), Homin Ukrayiny (Canada), and other periodicals of the diaspora. His articles about Ukraine’s liberation struggles appeared in print for fifty years, carried by almost all diaspora and other English, French, Dutch, Swiss, etc., publications.

Yury Shcherbak, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to Canada, spoke at the funeral in Montreal, stressing that the deceased was a great Ukrainian, a man of heroic destiny and prophetic talent, one of the most spectacular Ukrainian figures of the twentieth century. His works constitute a monumental and tragic encyclopedia of the Ukrainian struggle for independence. He left behind a brilliant collection of ideas, hypotheses, forecasts, facts, and names, and went down in our history as a Ukrainian Renaissance man. Unlike the writers of the Executed Renaissance of the 1920s, he refused to fall prey to the Communist regime and engaged with the Red horsemen of the Apocalypse, using the pen as the mightiest weapon. However diversified in terms of subject and format, Roman Oliynyk- Rakhmanny’s works are united by a burning love of Ukraine and a passionate desire for his beloved homeland to become an equal member of the family of free European nations. Ukraine was more than a theme, it was the flesh and blood of his entire creative life. He worked on a worldwide Ukrainian concept and became famous for his deep reflections on the meaning of being a member of modern Ukrainian civilization. More than fifty years ago, he wrote prophetically about the inevitable collapse of the USSR and the emergence of free national polities on its ruins.

Ambassador Shcherbak noted that “the title of the three-volume collection, Nuclear Age Ukraine , winning the Shevchenko Prize, has become symbolic. The author writes that the nuclear age for Ukraine meant the nuclear threats of the Cold War and Chornobyl disaster. It is not only the danger of radiation, but also the threat of assimilation and the unification of Ukrainians within this increasingly globalized world... I am here today not only as an ambassador of an independent state, not only as a politician and statesman, but also as a Ukrainian writer and member of the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine. I am sure that the name of Roman Oliynyk- Rakhmanny will be inscribed in gold in the history of Ukraine, in the heroic annals of Ukrainian letters.”