From War to Westminster

Stefan Terlezki’s inspiring triumph over adversity and battle against injustice

By Olena Wawryshyn

“You were born in slavery, but I hope from the bottom of my heart that you will die in freedom.”  These were the last words Ostap Terlezki said to his son Stefan as the 14-year-old was taken by the Nazis from Ukraine to work in Austria as a slave labourer.
The fervent wish of his father was realized in great measure as Stefan Terlezki eventually escaped slavery and enjoyed freedom after the war in his new home in Wales.  There, his career flourished, first in business, then in local politics. His career reached its apex 1983 when he became the first Ukrainian to be elected as a Member of Parliament in Britain.
In his powerful autobiography, From War to Westminster, published this past spring by the British-based publisher Pen & Sword Military, Terlezki outlines his harrowing and thrilling journey from pre-war Ukraine to England where he served as a Conservative MP in Margaret Thatcher’s government. This highly readable autobiography may do more to raise awareness and to promote understanding in the West of Ukraine’s tragic history in the 20th century than any other single book ever published.
Terlezki does an outstanding job of both recalling his own story and explaining Ukrainian history and the many injustices suffered by Ukrainians, first under the Poles in Western Ukraine, then under Russian and later Nazi troops. In addition, he graphically describes Stalin’s ruthless policies and the impact on Ukrainians, the NKVD’s and KGB’s cruel treatment of the Ukrainian people, the horrific experiences in the Siberian Gulag as well as the dreadful conditions in the refugee camps after the war.
From War to Westminster has many elements of a first-rate thriller.  The book uses literary techniques like flashbacks to create suspense. Lively dialogue brings characters to life. Sights, sounds and people, including the many young girls the attractive Terlezki encountered during his slave days and his escape to freedom, are vividly described.
His book will appeal to anyone interested in Ukraine, politics or anyone who simply enjoys a highly moving and thrilling human-interest story.  
The quality of the writing is noted in the book’s foreword written by Geoffrey Howe.  The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, who is a personal friend of Terlezki, writes: “This is a truly remarkable book, which tells an astonishing gripping life story in crisp, beautifully crafted English.  The spontaneity and recollection of language and mood is both evocative and convincing.”
It was thanks to Howe’s intercession that the Soviet authorities released Terlezki’s father from Siberia and allowed him to visit Terlezki for a month in Britain in 1984.
In Terlezki’s political career and as a chairman of a British football club, he met many high profile personalities, including Pope John Paul II and Henry Kissinger, but he never forgot his roots.
Terlezki was born in 1927 in the village of Oleshiw, in western Ukraine’s Halychyna in a farming community called Antoniwka into a patriotic and loving Ukrainian family.  “We grew up with a strong sense of national identity,” he writes.
He recalls how as a young boy he lay in a little alcove in their one-room white-washed house and could “hear the conversations of my parents and their friends as they discussed the affairs of family and village, often becoming heated and angry at the injustice people suffered under the Poles.”
These discussions and  the example  set by his father, Oleska, who often spoke out against injustice, even when it put him in peril, made a deep impression on the young Stefan. Oleksa worked as a manager at a brick works and on their land, which he farmed with the help of his wife Olena and Terlezki’s beloved sister Lywosi.  Both of his parents valued education and had high ambitions for Stefan. “If he was strict with me,” writes Stefan of his father, “it was in the hope that his only son would aim high, and come to enjoy advantages in life that he had never received.”
Throughout his often trying life journey, his parents’ love sustained him and the values they had imparted to him guided his actions.
Terlezki prayed throughout his experiences.  But, he created his own luck too.   Shrewd and wily, he escaped from the Russians, who wanted to draft him to fight in the Far East and, despite numerous great risks and brushes with death, made his way safely to the British Occupation Zone.
Honest and personable, he made friends easily.  He always looked out for ways to better himself, whether it was by watching movies to learn proper etiquette, finding work in the British Army’s catering services or simply keeping himself clean, a daunting task in the refugee camps.  Terlezki never let his captors or circumstances demean his dignity.
After he arrived in Britain, his hard work and desire for self-improvement soon got him out of the mines and into catering. While working full-time he took evening courses at a college and rose up into hotel management. Soon after marrying his Welsh wife, Mary, the couple bought a hotel and he became a successful businessman.
At every opportunity, he spoke about Ukraine’s plight and about the injustices in the Soviet  Union and in all countries where liberty was denied.  In his maiden speech in the House of Commons he pledged to uphold freedom for himself, “for Britain, the oppressed nations, and all mankind.”
When a delegation from Voroshilovgrad, the former name of Luhansk, visited Cardiff City Hall, he interrupted the proceedings to protest that the dignitary should be speaking Ukrainian and not Russian. All the while, Stefan never neglected to serve his constituents.
His inspiring story sets an example to Ukrainians worldwide. A determined optimist, Terlezki contributed to his society while furthering the Ukrainian cause.  With his book, which traces both his and Ukraine’s story until the Orange Revolution, Terlezki will continue to contribute for many years as his book will be a legacy of lasting benefit to Ukrainians and anyone interested in preserving liberty.
To purchase a copy of From War to Westminster, visit the publisher's website at: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk