Ulas Samchuk

Ulas Samchuk (Улас Олексійович Самчук) (20 February 1905 Derman (now in Rivne Oblast) - 9 July 1987 Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was a Ukrainian writer, publicist and journalist. He was born to a peasant family and started his education in Kremenets. Before he finished his secondary education, he was called up for service in the Polish Army in 1927, and later deserted in August of that year. He escaped to Germany. At first he worked delivering coal. With the help of a supportive German family, Samchuk continued his studies at the University of Breslau. In 1929, Samchuk moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia. He was attracted by the city’s vibrant Ukrainian community and the Ukrainian Free University in which he enrolled, and where he was active in the Students’ Academic Society. He graduated Ukrainian Free University in 1931. In 1932, while in Prague, Samchuk first heard about the holodomor unleashed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin upon the Ukrainian people, which some sources say eventually claimed as many as ten million lives. Overwhelmed by the horror, he wrote the novel Maria (1934)––the first literary work about the famine, and a powerful characterization of village life at the time

Contents

• Travolta Ulas Samchuk
• Works
• References

From 1941–1942, he was editor of the newspaper Volyn', before fleeing to Germany in 1944, where he founded and headed the literary-artistic organization MUR until 1948. In 1948, he emigrated to Canada and became the leader of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile.