Bezhuk, O. (2017). Olha Basarabova z Levytskykh: zhyttia i chyn [Olha Basarabova née Levytska: Life and Work]. Yevrosotsium Ukrainian Institute.
Annotation: Despite the substantial body of scholarship that has appeared on the subject, the twentieth-century Ukrainian liberation movement remains an understudied field, particularly at the level of individual biography. Addressing this gap, the monograph offers a comprehensive and balanced study of the principal spheres and directions of Olha Levytska-Basarab’s activity in civic and political organizations, societies, and the women’s movement, identifying her role in the Ukrainian national liberation struggle of the early twentieth century and her concrete impact on the subsequent course of Ukrainian history. The book analyzes the formation and transformation of Levytska-Basarab’s sociopolitical views through a thorough engagement with Ukrainian and international historiography; examines her activities in the civic and political life of Eastern Galicia and her involvement in Ukrainian educational, paramilitary, and charitable organizations; demonstrates her contribution to the emergence of the Ukrainian women’s movement and her connections with prominent contemporaries; investigates her work within the governments of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and her collaboration with the Ukrainian People’s Republic; reconstructs the foundations of her political worldview and offers an assessment of her work as a liaison for the Ukrainian Military Organization; and traces the impact of Levytska-Basarab’s deed on the development of the Ukrainian national liberation and international women’s movements.
For the first time, the monograph publishes the correspondence between Olha Levytska and Dmytro Basarab during the Great War (1914–1915), which offers a fuller view of the private side of its subject’s life. The study draws on photographs from the personal archive of Levytska-Basarab and from the Lviv Historical Museum, which together convey the texture of the early twentieth century and the tragic experience of the Ukrainian nation during the First World War.
On the basis of this monograph, it can be said that Olha Levytska-Basarab exemplifies the new type of twentieth-century woman that emerged in the course of the national liberation struggle of the era. In her short but eventful and richly productive life, she rose to a stature that places her alongside such outstanding Ukrainian women as Olena Stepaniv, Olena Okhrymovych-Zalizniak, and Zenoviia Mirna, among others. The thorough and integrated analysis of Levytska-Basarab’s life and work establishes her place in history, sheds further light on the activities of numerous women’s institutions, and elevates the significance of the Ukrainian women’s movement, which played an important role in the sociopolitical life of early twentieth-century Ukraine.