Love your native land, Love Ukraine and firmly adhere to the testament of the Great Kobzar!” – wrote Kyrylo Osmak to his daughter Natalka. “Beloved sister! Hope Natalka will bear in her life ideals of her father” – he would write in his near-death message. We can consider these testament letters as a kind of a milestone on the way in search of inherently Ukrainian history of the Second World War in the Museum exhibition space.
Meeting with Natalka took place in late 2000s, when the Ukrainian liberation movement of 1930-1950s became one of main components of the Museum exhibitions. However, the essence of this struggle itself – restoring of the Independent Integer Ukrainian State was lost among presentation of peculiarities of the partisan war, OUN leaders and UIA soldiers and commanders.
Letters from the prison, preserved by his wife and transferred to the Museum by his daughter became the first step for Natalka to learn, who her father was. The truth about him she learned just in 1992. With this personal correspondence, we figured out the personality of the Independent Ukraine architect.
Kyrylo Osmak cherished his national worldview. For this, he was punished at first time by Russian authorities during his student years.
Soon after the First World War began, he plunged into a whirlpool of the First Ukrainian War for Independence – he was among those who in 1917 established in the city of Kyiv the Council of United Public Organizations, which later turned into the Ukrainian Central Council. As a state employee, he engaged in land issues. During the Soviet rule in the interwar period, he worked on forming of dictionary of the Ukrainian agricultural terms on the base of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1928, 1930 and 1938 he was arrested with further prohibition to live on Ukrainian territory.
At the beginning of the German-Soviet War, he established contacts with OUN and plunged into underground work in Kyiv and Lviv. In 1944, he involved into developing of constituent documents of initiated by Ukrainian writer and political activist Ivan Bahrianyi underground Government and Parliament. These structures had to unite all national Ukrainian forces and establish the single front of struggle for Ukraine – Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council. “Our purpose –Independent Integer Ukrainian State on ethnic Ukrainian lands. Our way – revolution and liberation struggle against all suppressors of Ukrainian people. We will fight for Ukrainian people to be masters on their own land. On the altar of this struggle we put our labor and our lives”. These are words from the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council Universal act and an oath taken by the USLC President Kyrylo Osmak in Carpathian mountains on July 15, 1944. This moment changed status of Ukraine from the object into the subject of policy in Eastern Europe. In the same year, he was wounded and imprisoned during combat against NKVD unit. His real name and role in national movement became known just thanks to a traitor in rows of underground fighters. Being sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment in the Vladimir Central Prison (Vladimir city, Russian Federation now), with poor health, he managed to save his spirit. He continued his resistance even being in prison. In addition, till very death wrote letters to his family in order to continue struggle – his personal one and struggle hundreds of thousands our compatriots for the national liberation.