Anna Yaroslava (Slava) Muzyka

Slava Stetsko was born on May 14, 1920 in the Ukrainian village of Romanivka near Ternopil (Terebovlya raion) to Josyp Muzyka and Julia Dombrowsky. Her mother was from the neighbouring village of Slobidka Strusivska, a few kilometres from Romanivka. Her father was the head of the brotherhood in church. His friends respected him greatly, coming to him often for advice. It is no wonder that her father was buried near the church, where the respected and religious people were buried.

Born Anna Yevhenia Muzyka, she became a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1938. When a schism occurred within the OUN in 1940, she went with the more radical element of the OUN led by Stepan Bandera. During World War II, she served as an orderly and nurse in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and was arrested by Germans in Lviv in 1943. She remained in Germany as an émigré after her release in 1944.

After the war, she married Yaroslav Stetsko in Munich, and became a member of the central committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) and its chairman after the death of her husband in 1986. At that time she also became an executive member of the World Anti-Communist League.

Mrs. Stetsko returned to Ukraine in July 1991. The following year, she formed and became a chairman of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN), the political party that was established in Ukraine on the basis of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which she also led for the last decade.

The name of Slava Stetsko figures on the roll call of the Ukrainian Parliament. Several years ago she returned permanently to Ukraine and, after getting Ukrainian citizenship, she was elected to parliament. Yaroslava Stetsko was elected to the fourth Rada in the list of the Our Ukraine bloc (number 11). She was a member of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs. She was also a Member of Parliament of the third convocation. As the eldest member of that parliament, she read the text of the inaugural oath of loyalty to Ukraine - during which the entire Communist Party faction walked out.

More than 10,000 Ukrainians paid their last respects on March 15-16, 2003 to Yaroslava (Slava) Stetsko, one of the nation's staunchest and most-committed independence leaders, who was laid to rest at Baikove Cemetary in Kyiv following a short illness.

Mrs. Stetsko died of heart failure on March 12, 2003 in Munich, Germany, where she had traveled for medical treatment.

While Ms. Stetsko will be remembered by many as the spouse of Jaroslaw Stetsko, she was a significant individual in her own right. She participated in practically all the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) congresses, the last time in 1998 in Toronto. In fact she was supportive of the UWC in the early 1960’s when it was merely an idea and she unequivocally, supported the continued and more enhanced existence of the UWC following Ukraine’s independence.

Encyclopedia of Ukraine: Slava Stetsko (nee Muzyka), born May 14, 1920 in Romanivka, Ternopil county, Ukraine. Political leader and journalist; wife of Yaroslav Stetsko. She studied at Lviv University and the Ukrainian Free University. She was a co-founder of the Red Cross units serving the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the Second World War. She was imprisoned during the German occupation of Ukraine, and remained in Germany as an emigre in 1944. Stetsko became a member of the Central Committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). She edited the German edition of ABN Correspondence (1948), the quarterly "Ukrainian Review", and other ABN periodicals, and she organized and participated in a number of international anticommunist congresses. She served as a member of the central executive of the Ukrainian Youth Association (1948-1953).

From 1968 she was head of the external affairs sector of the OUN (Bandera faction). She was a co-organizer of the European Council of Liberty and became its vice-president in 1985. In 1986 she became president of the ABN and an executive member of the World Anti-Communist League. In 1991, at the Seventh Great Assembly of the OUN, Slava Stetsko was elected leader of the OUN Bandera faction.