Myron Tarnavsky

Myron Tarnavsky

Myron Omelianovych Tarnavsky (Ukrainian: Мирон Омелянович Тарнавський; August 29, 1869 – June 29, 1938) was a supreme commander of the Ukrainian Galician Army, the military of the West Ukrainian People's Republic.

Background

Tarnavsky was born into a family of priests in Baryliv, a village in the Lviv region. He attended a village grade school and a German gymnasium in Brody, western Ukraine. He then served for one year in the Austrian military and due to his good performance was given the opportunity to pursue officer training in Lviv and, later, Vienna.

Military activities

In 1899 Myron Tarnavsky completed officer training in Vienna and was stationed in Sambir and, for a longer period of time, in Zolochiv where as an officer of the Austrian military he played an active role in local Ukrainian community life.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Tarnavsky was assigned to the front and fought against the Russian military. In 1915 he was wounded but returned to the Russian front, fighting in the Carpathian Mountains, later that year. In 1916, Tarnavsky obtained the rank of major in the Austro-Hungarian army and became the commander of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. In 1918 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and given command of the 16th infantry regiment, then stationed in central Ukraine. At the end of 1918, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a western Ukrainian state was declared in the formerly Austrian-controlled territory of Galicia. Tarnavsky joined the Ukrainian Galician Army in February 1919, and obtained the rank of colonel. In July of that year, after Ukrainian forces were driven out of Galicia by the Polish army, Tarnavsky was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and became Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Galician Army. Tarnavsky oversaw the Galician offensive on Kyiv. His army was decimated by a typhus epidemic and he arranged an armistice with the forces of Anton Denikin. Because this was unauthorized by the Ukrainian policial leadership and he was relieved of duty and court-martialed in November 1919. Tarnavsky was then acquitted and briefly reinstated as supreme commander.

After the war

After spending some time hiding in Balta and Kyiv, Tarnavsky eventually ended up in a Polish camp for prisoners of war in Tuchola. In late 1920 he was released, but refused to follow most of the leadership of the defeated West Ukrainian People's Republic in emigration. Instead, the former general settled in the village of Chernytsia, not far from Brody, where he spent the rest of his life. Myron Tarnavsky died on 29 June 1938. His funeral service, headed by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and organized by Roman Shukhevych and his business partner Bohdan Chaykivsky, took place in Lviv's St. George's Cathedral and gathered more than 20,000 members of the Ukrainian community from different regions, among them representatives of various civic organizations. Tarnavsky's body was interred on Lviv's Yaniv Cemetery.