Volodymyr Yaniv

Yaniv was first arrested by the Polish police for a period of two years in 1934-35 at the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp. In 1936 he was once again arrested and given a 5-year term before being released in 1938. In July 1941 he was arrested by the Germans and confined in Krakow for membership in the Ukrainian National Committee, established on 21 June 1941. His prison experiences became the basis for his dissertation and many of the books and studies he published in later years.

Yaniv completed his gymnasium studies in Lviv in 1928 and further studied history and psychology at the Lviv University. After incarceration at the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp he completed his studies in Berlin with a dissertation on "The psychological changes of political prisoners". In 1946 he moved to Munich where took an active part in the life of the Ukrainian Free University. Yaniv wrote numerous works studying the effect of incarceration on the works of notable Ukrainian cultural figures such as Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Vasyl Symonenko, Ihor Kalynets.

In his youth, in 1927-32, Yaniv took an interest in the Plast Ukrainian scouting movement, in which he held various leadership roles. He returned to scouting in 1946 and continued to be active in Ukrainian scouting to the end of his life.

Volodymyr Yaniv (born 21 November 1908 in Lviv, Galicia – 19 November 1991) was a community and scouting leader in the 1930s, an activist in the OUN and the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), editor of numerous student and community publications, a professional psychologist and sociologist, and a Ukrainian poet. He was a professor of Psychology at the Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Hirschberg Castle [de] (1947–8), professor of the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (from 1955) and its rector (1968–86), professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome (from 1963), a publicist, poet, member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (from 1987).