Luka Bych was born into a family of the Kuban Black Sea Cossacks (descendants of the Ukrainian-speaking Zaporozhye Cossacks). He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, and worked in a private company in the Caucasus. In 1912, he was elected as the mayor of Baku. After the February Revolution of 1917, he was appointed by the Provisional Government as Chief of Supply of the Caucasian Army. After the front collapsed and the regiment’s personnel deserted, Bych returned to the Kuban.

October 1917 saw a permanent Kuban Legislative Rada stem from the Kuban Regional Rada. The new body elected the Kuban Regional Government in early November. Under the chairmanship of Luka Bych, this government assumed the powers of supreme state authority in the Kuban, refused to recognize the Soviet government in Petrograd, and launched the establishment of Cossack detachments.

Early 1918 saw an independent Kuban People’s Republic proclaimed in the area of the former Kuban region. Soon it lost the confrontation with the Kuban Regional Soviet. Bych left Yekaterinodar along with the Kuban People’s Republic’s government agencies and took part in the First Kuban campaign led by the Volunteer Army (the spring of 1918). In August 1918, as Yekaterinodar was captured by the Volunteer Army, the Kuban People’s Republic authorities returned there. Enjoying the support of Kuban Cossacks, they stepped up their activities, trying to cast off their actual subordination to the command of Anton Denikin. Bych advocated broad self-government of the Kuban, which led to his resignation at the end of 1918.

At the beginning of 1919, Bych led the delegation of the Kuban Republic at the Versailles (Paris) Peace Conference. After the Kuban region was captured by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in 1920, he remained in exile. Since 1922, he lived in Czechoslovakia, where he taught municipal law at the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy (the town of Podebrady).