Osyp Dumin

Dumin Osyp Oleksiyovych was born on September 26, 1893 in the village of Hrushiv, Drohobych povit (district), Halychyna. He studied at Lviv University, participated in the youth movement, and was a member of the “Sich Riflemen” Society.

During the First World War, in 1914, he joined the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. In 1915 he was taken prisoner of war by the russians, and worked at iron ore mines in Kryvyi Rih.

In 1917, he escaped from a prisoner of war camp and went to Kyiv. In 1918–1919, he was a commander of a chota, a sotnia, a kurin, a regiment, and an army group of Sich Riflemen. In 1919, he was taken prisoner of war by Poland and escaped to Czechoslovakia. Because of the threat of internment to Poland, he secretly left for Germany, then – for moscow, petrograd, and Kharkiv. Disillusioned with the bolshevik regime, in 1922 he left for Halychyna. In 1923–1924 he studied at the Law Faculty of the Lviv Secret Ukrainian University. In 1924 he emigrated to Germany.

At that time he joined the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainska Viyskova Organizatsia – UVO – Transl.). Given his past experience in the underground struggle, he immediately became a member of the Intelligence Department, and soon headed it.

At the head of the intelligence service, Dumin managed to create a powerful underground intelligence network in Eastern and Central Europe, whose main goal was to help restore a free and independent Ukraine. At his demand, special attention in the intelligence work was paid to conspiracy. Personal direct contacts were minimized, the texts of messages were encrypted, a system of so-called “mailboxes” was used to transmit the collected materials, clothes and appearance were changed, and even make-up was used.

The intelligence network led by O. Dumin grew rapidly and became large-scaled. The work was organized so that the down echelons knew only their leaders, in case of failure of one it was excluded that he would give away all the agents. Intelligence officers and messengers often knew each other only by code names.

Having left the leadership of the UVO Intelligence, O. Dumin moved to Königsberg, where he immersed himself in literary and editorial work. He authored such works as “The History of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen 1914-1918”, “The History of the Ukrainian Army”, “The Uprising Against Hetman Skoropadskyi and the Sich Riflemen”, and others.

After the World War II, O. Dumin was arrested by the soviet nkvd and executed in Gdansk in May 1945.