Avgustyn Voloshyn
Rev. Avgustyn Ivanovych Voloshyn was a Carpatho-Ukrainian politician, teacher, essayist, priest of the Mukacheve eparchy in Czechoslovakia of the Greek Catholic Church. He was president of the independent Carpatho-Ukraine, which existed for one day on March 15, 1939.Biography
Voloshyn was born on March 17, 1874 in Kelechyn in Carpathian Ruthenia, in the Máramaros County of the Kingdom of Hungary. He studied at Uzhhorod School of Theology and at Budapest University. He became a Greek Catholic priest, from 1924 a Papal chamberer. He was professor of mathematics at Uzhhorod Teacher Institute from 1900 to 1917. In 1918, he became head of the Subcarpathian National Council, which in 1919 asked Czechoslovakia to confederate Carpathian Ruthenia into Czechoslovakia. This was realised in Autumn 1919. In 1925, he was voted as MP in Houses of Parliament in Prague.
On 26 October 1938, president Hácha named Voloshyn to the head of the government of Subcarpathian Autonomous Region. Following the breakup of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, he tried to proclaim the Carpatho-Ukraine independence and became president of Carpatho-Ukraine for a few hours with the help of the rest of the Czechoslovak army and made to the Kingdom of Romania a proposal for unification, but he was refused and one day later the region was occupied and annexed by the Hungarians. On March 19, 1939, Voloshyn under the protection of last Czechoslovak troops retreated to the Romanian border, which was Czechoslovakia's ally.
Voloshyn then fled to Prague, where he lived during the war as a professor of the Ukrainian Free University. In October and November 1944, the Soviet Red Army took the whole of Carpathian Ruthenia, and incorporated it into the Ukrainian SSR. The government of Czechoslovakia later agreed, on June 29 1945, to cede the territory. The population of Carpathian Ruthenia became Soviet citizens. When Soviet troops took Prague in May 1945, Avgustyn Voloshyn was arrested by the NKVD and taken to Moscow. He died in 19 July 1945 in Moscow's Butyrka prison.
In 2002, by the decree of the then Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, Avhustyn Voloshyn was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine and given the Order of State posthumously.
