Jacob Makohin

Jacob Makohin , born Prince Leon Bogun Mazeppa von Razumowski (born September 27, 1880, probably in the Viazowa near Schowkwa , Galicia , † January 13, 1956 in the US Naval Hospital, Chelsea , Massachusetts ) was a Ukrainian-American nobleman, officer and political lobbyist . He was a pretender to the position of hetman of the hetmanate Ukraine.

Life and activity

Background, early years, and career in the US military

Jacob Makohin was born as Leon Bogun Mazeppa von Razumkowski. He came from a long-established noble family in the Ukraine and grew up in Bukovina , which at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy.

Around 1903 Razumkowski fled from Russia via Canada to the United States after an assassination attempt on his family, in which his parents were killed. In 1905 Razumkowsky joined the American Marine Corps under the name Jacob Makohin. He chose the name Makohin as a gesture of recognition for the man who had saved his life during the attack on his family.

With the Marines Makohin was used successively in Cuba , the Philippines and on the ships USS Kentucky and USS Texas before he was finally assigned to the newly created formation of the American Naval Aviation in Annapolis (Naval Aviation Camp Annapolis) in 1913 . He was one of the very first American military pilots. During his service with the First Marine Aeronautic Company in the Azores during the First World War, he was appointed warrant officer. He was naturalized in the United States in February 1917. After the United States entered the war, he was used as a pilot. From 1919 he was stationed at Marine Barracks, Parris Island, South Carolina. In March 1921, after sixteen years of service in the American military, he retired as a second lieutenant due to an injury. In addition to his work with the Marines and as a pilot, he is said to have been involved in intelligence matters.

Interwar period

Makohin became known in the 1920s because it was at this time that he began to work as a political organizer, financier and lobbyist for the state independence of Ukraine, whose historical-cultural areas at that time belonged partly to the Polish and partly to the Soviet state. In order to come closer to realizing his goal, he tried during this time to persuade as many Ukrainian emigrant organizations as possible in North America to act together in the way he had in mind. He found support above all from the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League of Canada (USRL). In order to legitimize his activities, Makohin asserted that he was the last living descendant of Count Cyril Gririewich Razumowsky, who had been the last hetman of the historical hetmanate of Ukraine under the Russian Tsarina Catherine II . In literature he is z. Sometimes even referred to as a pretender to the position of the hetman of a restored hetmanate.

In addition to his advocacy for the independence of Ukraine, Makohin, who according to various sources was very prosperous (in some cases he is referred to as a millionaire), turned against the cultural and political oppression of the Ukrainian minorities in the years between the two world wars in what was then Poland and what was then the Soviet Union. For this purpose he financed u. a. In 1931 the establishment of an information office for Ukrainian issues in London , briefly known as the “Ukranian Bureau”, headed by Vladimir Kaye-Kysilewsky, was dedicated to informing the international public about the needs and problems of the Ukrainian population in these countries. In the years that followed, he also financed the establishment of similar information offices in Geneva and Prague , the establishment of the Prague Museum of the Ukrainian Liberation Struggle, and numerous other activities, projects and projects that serve Ukrainian independence or the interests of the Ukrainian ethnic group Organizations.

Furthermore, in the inter-war years, Makohin traveled to numerous European countries, such as Austria, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia, in order to promote his political goals, to maintain contacts with local like-minded organizations and to carry out joint activities aimed at realizing the common goals. to organize. In connection with a trip to Poland in 1931, where he gathered information in the Lviv area about the campaign of the Polish government, which was ongoing at that time, to polonize - i.e. for cultural assimilation - the Ukrainian population in this part of the country and to meet with representatives of the National Democrats Union of Ukraine, he was arrested by the Polish police and soon afterwards expelled from the country as an undesirable person. Shortly afterwards, he gave an interview to the Manchester Guardian in which he denounced the political persecution and oppression of members of the Ukrainian ethnic group in Galicia and the Ukrainian culture by the Polish authorities there.

These activities brought Makohin the attention of numerous European secret services in the 1930s, such as the British Secret Service and the Security Service of the SS (SD), the intelligence service of National Socialist Germany.

World War II and last years

At the time of the outbreak of World War II, Makohin was living in Alassio , Italy , from where he returned to the United States in 1941.

Makohin once again caused a sensation in public because of public accusations against him in the press - especially in Time Magazine - that he would belong to the "henchmen, quislings and puppets of Hitler" ("Hitler's stooges, quislings or puppets."), which he publicly rejected. The incorrectness of this claim is also supported by the fact that the National Socialist police officers classified him as an enemy of the state at the end of the 1930s: in the spring of 1940 the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin - which erroneously suspected him to be in Great Britain - then placed him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who the Nazi surveillance apparatus regarded them as particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be located and arrested with special priority in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the occupation troops following special SS units.

After his death, Makohin was buried in the American military national cemetery Arlington Cemetery . He is the only member of the European nobility who is buried in this cemetery.

family

Makohin was married since 1920 to Susan E. Fallon (1891-1976), the daughter of an admiral. The marriage remained childless.

literature

• James Edward Peters; Arlington National Cemetery: Shrine to America's Heroes , 2000, p. 222.
• "Pretenders Forward", in: Time Magazine, July 7, 1941.
• Letter to the editor in Time Magazine, December 8, 1941.
• "2d Lt. Jacob Makohin, USMC-Ret. ", In: Armed Forces Journal International , Vol. 93, 1955, p. 686. ( digitized version )

Web links

• Short biography of Makohin in the online encyclopedia "Ukrainians in the UK"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emil Revyuk: Polish Atrocities in Ukraine , 1931, S. 42nd
2. ^ Entry on Makohin on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .