In reaction to the ban on the use of forests by farmers, in late 1843 the farmers of 22 villages in Bukovina refused to carry out the duties imposed on them, demanding the establishment of Ukrainian schools, free access to forests and pastures and improving their status.

During the March Revolution, the Bukovinian peasants elected him a member of the newly established Austrian Reichstag in Vienna, where he stood up for their interests.

In November 1848, in response to the limited peasant reform of 1848 in Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia, he led an uprising in the mountain villages of the Vyshnytsia and Storozhynets districts.

Kobylytsia was arrested in Zhabie in April 1850 and died of torture-related illness in 1851 in the prison of Gura Humorului in the north-east of what is now Romania.

[3] The Ukrainian poet Yuriy Fedkovych wrote a poem entitled Lukian Kobylytsia, in which he tells his life in the form of a ballad.