Scholars in Exile

Front matter

The Ukraman Intellectual World in Interwar Czechoslovakia

The Ukrainian Intellectual World in Interwar Czechoslovakia

The Ukrainian Intellectual World in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Contents

List of Tables xi

Preface xiii

Introduction. 3

Index

Tables

Czechoslovak government expenditure on the Assistance Program 17

Financial assistance given to Ukrainian institutions in Czechoslovakia in 1926 and 1927 18

Individuals by nationality 25

Individuals by place of origin 26

Individuals by social background 26

Individuals by age 27

Individuals by level of education 27

Courses taught at the Ukrainian Free University

in Vienna in 1921 33

Rectors of the Ukrainian Free University, 1921-38 38 University staff participation at the First Ukrainian Congress in Prague, by section and subsection 50

Offices and laboratories at the academy 57

Academy scholars at the First Ukrainian Congress,

Institutional and individual members of the Ukrainian Academic Committee, 1938 102

Book titles in the Ukrainian Economic Academy

Book titles in the Ukrainian Economic Academy Library bylanguage 124

Book titles in the Ukrainian Economic Academy Library by subject 124

Periodicals that the library subscribed to by subject andlanguage 125

20 21

Tables

Number of books in the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute Library by language 126

Collections of the Ukrainian Historical Institute 134

Scholarly publications by institution and subject, 1900-45 139 Articles by the Ukrainian scholars in Czechoslovakia in Ukrains'ka zahal'na entsykl'opediia 165

Preface

This study grew out of my interest in Czech and Ukrainian history and culture in general, and in Ukrainian institutional and intellectual history specifically. Having been born during Soviet times in the easternmost part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire in the capital of Bukovyna — then Czernowitz, now Chernivtsi — I spent a great deal of my childhood in a beautiful UNESCO-designated building, the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans, which is now a seat of the university. This building was designed by the renowned Czech architect and philanthropist Josef Hlávka. Of course, as a child, I was not allowed to know why Hlávka's building happened to be in my city, on the very western edge of the Soviet Union. But even then, I was well acquainted with his name and felt very much at home within the walls of this beautiful building, where I spent many Saturdays with my father, who worked there. Only later, after the Soviet Union dissolved, did I learn why the Czech architect's masterpiece had come to be built in my city, and I discovered this along with many other things that had previously been blocked from me.

My interest in the life and works of Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, another famous figure, developed during the perestroika years. Certainly, any knowledge of him, his works, and his ideas was prohibited back then. Yet some of his books, along with numerous others, somehow made their way across the militarized border, with all its barbed wire and security zones. By the time I was preparing my bachelor's thesis, my supervisor Volodymyr Fisanov had introduced me to some of Masaryk's works, even though they were still officially banned in the soon-to-fall Soviet Union. This, my first reading in the Czech language - slow, challenging, and requiring the use of a dictionary — opened a new world to me. Overall, the experience of reading and discovering new things every day was incomparably intense during the perestroika. Besides gaining xiv Preface access to plenty of new books and journals, sometimes borrowed overnight, we were able to read for the first time literature written by exiles. My favourites were Russian poets (knowledge about Ukrainians had not yet reached us), and some of those poems (i.e., Marina Tsvetaeva's poems written in Czechoslovakia) I can still recite by heart.

My interest in Czechoslovakia — its people, history, and culture — blossomed during my graduate studies at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, with its strong tradition in Czech and Slovak studies. At that time, I also discovered the history, literature, and culture of Ukraine, all of which I had long been shielded from. Reading hundreds of book, attending numerous conferences, and meeting countless fascinating people was an eye-opening experience that had a deep and lasting effect on my intellectual development.

My interest in these countries was further nurtured by my stint at the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto, where I worked for more than a decade. Working on another degree did not distract me from the constant discoveries that library has to offer, about all aspects of Ukraine as well as Czechoslovakia. I remember vividly how as a graduate student I discovered at Robarts a volume of documents concerning Russian and Ukrainian émigrés. I vividly recall sitting on the floor in the stacks for hours reading one document after another. It was a revelation. And that was the beginning of the decade I would spend reading and researching the topic of this study. To write this book, I also visited other libraries and archives in Canada, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine. So this work is the result of many years of research.

This is a synthetic study intended for an English-speaking audience. While over the past twenty-five years considerable scholarship on different aspects of the topic has appeared in Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovak, the literature in English is slim. This book is an attempt to fill in the gaps and provide a general overview of the scholarly life of Ukrainian immigrants in Czechoslovakia during the interwar years. The work has benefited greatly from in-depth studies of personalities and institutions that have appeared in Ukrainian and some in Czech. I am deeply beholden to these scholars for their works, which are included in the bibliography.

I am grateful to Luba Frastacky, a librarian — now retired — at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, who greatly enhanced my knowledge of Czechoslovakia. Whether it involved preparing an exhibition on the Prague Spring of 1968 or working on Czech-Canadian writer Josef Skvorecky's documents, she taught her graduate student a great deal about Czechoslovakia in 1968, Skvorecky's books, the publishing house "68 Publishers, samizdat, and much more. It was insightful

Preface xv and fun; she further endeared me to the country, and I am extremely thankful for this.

My subseguent research and educational journeys to the Czech Republic, particularly Prague, only deepened my interest. Over the years, I have travelled to the Czech Republic for research and language study. But it was actually for more than that. As Paul Wilson, Canadian translator of Škvorecký and other Czech writers, neatly put it: "Prague is a city where visitors can still experience something of the ancient magnetism that charmed both commoners and kings over the centuries ... a place like no other on earth." I feel exactly the same way! In this country, I have met people who not only helped me with my research but also shared with me their inspirations, their kindness, and their wit.

I am deeply beholden to Lukáš Babka of the Slavonic Library in Prague for his extensive help with the research, for reading and commenting on the parts of this study, for helping with access to materials, and, last but not least, for patiently answering my numerous questions. Special thanks goes to Dagmar Petišková of the Pedagogical Museum and Library of J.A. Comenius in Prague, for reading the manuscript, commenting on it, and scrutinizing its Czech diacritics. I would like to thank Michaela Kuthanová of the Museum of Czech Literature in Prague for helping me access the archival collections of Ukrainian émigrés. I am also grateful to Eva Sokolová of the Slavonic Library and Klára Kolinská of Charles University in Prague for their generous help while I was researching the book. Also, I am grateful to my friend Nasta Avdéjeva, who, for more than a decade of our friendship, always made sure that I read, saw, and tried as many Czech things as possible. All my Czech colleagues and friends gave me a renewed sense of collegiality and friendship for which I am extremely grateful.

As mentioned, the decade I spent discovering and reading materials at Robarts considerably broadened my knowledge of the complicated history of Ukraine, particularly of the history of emigration. Attending events devoted to various aspects of Ukraine at the University of Toronto, as well as meeting and listening to experts on the subject from around the world, was of vital importance to my education, but meeting interesting and insightful people was the true gift.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Paul Robert Magocsi for his valuable suggestions about handling this project and for his interest in it. I am also grateful for his help improving the outline of this study at its earliest stages, as well as for reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript. His astute remarks were very beneficial for deepening my understanding of the theme. Additionally, his course on Ukrainian history helped me immensely to gain a deeper knowledge of the subject.

xvi Preface

I would also like to thank Thomas Prymak, to whom I am deeply indebted for reading the entire book and for his generous comments on it. His insights were very beneficial. Our decade-plus friendship and our cooperation on various research projects helped me enormously to understand the historian's craft. Years ago, our first collaborative project was on a Ukrainian émigré historian, who will feature in this study, and this work heightened my interest in the subject even more. I am also thankful to Myron Momryk, the now-retired archivist who years ago introduced me to valuable archival collections at Library and Archives Canada, in Ottawa, and then over the years very kindly assisted me with my many questions.

I am very grateful to the interlibrary loan staff members at Robarts Library at the University of Toronto for their enormous help in finding requested materials for me. Special thanks go to all of the staff at the Slavonic library at the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague for their kind-hearted assistance. I appreciate two anonymous readers. Their comments, suggestions, and constructive critiques have enriched this study. I would like to thank my editor Stephen Shapiro for his professionalism and advice. My special gratitude also goes to the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre in Toronto for providing me with a Professor Wasyl Janischewskyj Scholarship Fund to support my research and writing.

My gratitude also goes to my friend Lee Haviland for reading parts of the manuscript and for her helpful suggestions. Deepest thanks to my sister, Maryna Chernyavska, who read and commented on the first draft of the manuscript. Her comments and insights were most helpful. Last but not least, my greatest thanks go to my husband, Anatoly, without whose support, understanding, and tolerance neither this book nor other projects would have come into being. I owe him more than I can express.

While this study was enriched with the help of all the people mentioned above, all shortcomings and mistakes are mine alone.

The Ukrainian Intellectual World in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Introduction

At the beginning of 2014, Charles University in Prague announced a special Václav Havel Scholarship. It was intended for students who could not study in their home countries because they lived under a totalitarian or authoritarian regime or suffered persecution of some sort. Ukrainians were invited to apply. Most of the students who were accepted were from the Crimea and Donbas; several had been wounded in 2014 on the Maidan, in Kyiv, during the popular revolution that overthrew the corrupt and authoritarian Ukrainian president who was in power at the time. Other universities and institutions followed the example of Charles University. Among those who offered the scholarships were Palacký University in Olomouc, the Czech Technical University in Prague, and the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. The students began studying the Czech language in Prague, Poděbrady, and other cities and towns in the country.

This was not the first time that the Czech government and the university helped Ukrainians by offering support through education. The Havel Scholarship initiative was an echo of events that had taken place in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Czechoslovak government financially supported educational and employment initiatives for different groups of émigrés. The newborn democracy was then generously assisting various émigré educational institutions and providing scholarships for émigré students. The largest groups among the émigrés in 1920s and 1930s in Czechoslovakia were Russians and Ukrainians, but there were also Belarusians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Armenians, and others.

During 1920s, Prague became one of the most important destinations for Ukrainian émigrés in Europe and one of the centres of Ukrainian scholarly, cultural, political, and civic life. Assistance from the Czechoslovak government enabled established émigré scholars to do their work and to develop their fields as well as to educate and nurture a new generation. After flourishing in the 1920s, the assistance program gradually wound down over the following decade. The world economic crisis, the improvement in Czechoslovak-Soviet relations, and tensions in political life in the Transcarpathian region (Podkarpatská Rus) all played important roles in reducing the support given to the émigrés.

This book focuses on Ukrainian émigré scholarly life in Czechoslovakia between the world wars, particularly in Prague and Podébrady (a town in what is now the Czech Republic). The scholarly life of Ukrainian émigré intellectuals in Czechoslovakia between the wars deserves special consideration as a vital part of twentieth-century Ukrainian intellectual and institutional history. This is because that scholarship forged an inextricable link between academic work prior to the First World War and its development after the Second World War, particularly in North America. It ensured a much-needed continuity of Ukrainian scholarship, especially considering the repeated purge of Ukrainian intellectuals in Soviet Ukraine.

The interwar period of Ukrainian academic life is investigated in the context of the Czechoslovak government's general policies toward the émigrés it welcomed to the country and those who came of their own accord. This is a history of those individuals who had just lost their chance of building their own state during the events from 1917 to 1921 in Ukraine. For them, the experience of living, studying, and working in democratic Czechoslovakia was a positive lesson, and an impactful one. In their host country, they carried out scholarly and educational activities that were often remarkable.

Atthe time, the very word "Ukrainian" was little-known in the West among scholars as well as the general public. Thus, it is important to specify what the terms "Ukrainian scholar" and "Ukrainian intellectual" meant in the 1920s and 1930s. In the context of this study, these terms are applied to scholars who belonged to the Ukrainian émigré intellectual environment through their work and who considered it their mission to promote knowledge about Ukraine. These scholars taught at institutions of higher learning, belonged to scholarly societies, wrote monographs and textbooks, and delivered public lectures. They also educated a new and younger generation of students, who became professionals while retaining a sense of national identity. Within a relatively short period, they built an impressive intellectual and educational infrastructure in their host country.’

The creation of this academic infrastructure would not have been possible without the generous help of the Czechoslovak government and particularly President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937). The humanistic values of the Czech and Slovak enlighteners of the nineteenth

Introduction 5 century greatly influenced Masaryk's ethics and informed his interest in the Slavonic peoples. He believed it was necessary for Slavonic peoples to study one another and wanted to make Prague the Slavonic academic and cultural centre of Europe. This was official policy, and émigré groups in Czechoslovakia - including the Ukrainians — benefited from it, particularly in the 1920s. It was, in fact, instrumental in Czechoslovakia becoming the centre of Ukrainian scholarly life between the world wars.

The Ukrainians were appreciative of both the Czechoslovak government and Masaryk himself. Many members of the Ukrainian émigré community, from professors and political leaders to students, wrote letters of gratitude to Masaryk.? As early as 1923, the scholar-philologist Stepan Smal’-Stots’kyi (1859-1938) wrote a letter to the political and cultural figure Kyrylo Studyns'kyi (1868-1941) with regard to accepting Masaryk as a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, based in L’viv in the Ukrainian-populated part of interwar Poland, in which he noted "the great good that Masaryk has bestowed upon us ... [He] has the eternal gratitude of the Ukrainian people.”

The Ukrainians developed a vibrant scholarly, cultural, and political life in Prague. More than 210 Ukrainian societies, groups, unions, and communities were active in Czechoslovakia between the wars.* At the time, Ukrainian life had been largely suppressed in the Ukrainian lands: Soviet Ukraine, Polish-ruled Galicia, and Romanian-ruled Bukovyna. After the failed attempt to found an independent state, many émigrés in Czechoslovakia devoted themselves entirely to scholarly work and to educating the younger generation. Professors - many of whom were former state-builders — succeeded in educating a generation of students, most of whom, at least initially, were former soldiers. The Canadian historian Orest Subtelny (1941-2016) wrote of these personalities that “given the many well-educated, talented, and committed individuals in their ranks," in spite of great economic difficulties, they created numerous institutions, published much, and "introduced West Europeans to Ukrainian national aspirations.”

For Ukrainian scholars, living in Czechoslovakia had both advantages and disadvantages. The former included academic freedom - they were free to study what they wanted and to choose research methods they deemed suitable, and they were close to European research institutions and European scholars. As to the latter, these people were "abroad": historians, archaeologists, linguists, and ethnologists in particular needed research materials that could only be found in the Ukrainian lands. Lack of access to libraries and archives with primary materials and, on a more general level, feelings of isolation from and nostalgia for their native land had an obvious impact on their lives and scholarship.

Non-Ukrainians contributed to their cause — for example, the pedagogue Sofiia Rusova (née Lindfors) (1856-1940), who had French and Swedish roots and grew up in pro-Russian surroundings; the sociologist and political figure Ol'gerd Ipolyt Bochkovs'kyi (1885-1939), who was of Lithuanian and Polish descent; and the statistician and economist Fedir Shcherbyna (1849-1936), from Kuban, corresponding member of St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, who started writing in the Ukrainian language in his sixties, all made significant contributions. Some prominent figures in Ukrainian scholarly life in Prague belonged to distinguished families in the Ukrainian intellectual community. For instance, Dmytro Antonovych (1877-1945) was the son of renowned historian Volodymyr Antonovych (1834-1908); Oleksander Kolessa (1867-1945) was the brother of distinguished folklorist Filaret Kolessa (1871-1947); and Ivan Horbachevs'kyi (1854-1942) was the brother of the lawyer and political figure Antin Horbachevs'kyi (1856-1944). Some of these scholars had received their education in Europe before the First World War: Dmytro Antonovych, as well as his wife — painter and art historian Kateryna Antonovych (1887-1975) — studied in Italy; Bochkovs'kyi received his education in Prague; and some Ukrainians from Galicia and Bukovyna were educated in Vienna.

The initial goal of the institutions founded by Ukrainian scholars in Czechoslovakia was to prepare their students for productive work in their hoped-for future - that is, in a democratic Ukraine. For a long time, however, this dream did not come to pass, and many students left Czechoslovakia in search of work. After the Second World War, many of the émigrés fled to other European countries, such as Germany, and eventually immigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere. But not all managed to flee to the West. The fates of some of those who stayed in Czechoslovakia in 1945, when the Soviet Army came, were tragic: some of them died in Soviet prisons or in the Gulag, and some committed suicide. Others, however, remained in Czechoslovakia, and some continued to work, but after 1945 Prague ceased to be a centre of Ukrainian scholarly life in Europe.

This study is limited to Ukrainian émigré scholarly life in two places: Prague and Podébrady, with the bulk of the discussion focused on Prague. The capital of Czechoslovakia became the heart of Ukrainian émigré scholarship between the wars due to the concentration of scholars who lived and worked there. Podébrady was home to a Ukrainian technical institution that played an important role in educating a new generation of Ukrainian professionals in an array of technical fields. Ukrainian intellectual life existed in other cities and towns in Czechoslovakia as well - for example, in Brno, Bratislava, and

Introduction 7

Uzhhorod - but this is beyond the scope of this book. The story starts in the early 1920s, when the Czechoslovak government launched an impressive assistance program for émigrés and the country became a centre of Ukrainian émigré life. The period covered in this study ends in 1938. Since the years 1938 to 1945 constitute a distinct historical era, they will not be discussed in this work; however, occasional references will be made to this period, particularly to the year 1945, when the life of the Ukrainian émigré community abruptly ended.

Between the wars, Prague also became an important centre of Ukrainian poetry. It was home to the "Prague Poetic School," a group of émigré Ukrainian poets and writers, including levhen Malaniuk (1897— 1968), Leonid Mosendz (1897-1948), Oleksandr Oles’ (1878-1944), Iurii Darahan (1894-1926), Olena Teliha (1906-1942), Oksana Liaturyns’ka (1902-1970), and Halyna Mazurenko (1901-2000). This phenomenon too, however, lies beyond the scope of our work. Scholarship and learned societies are the focus here.

Prague was also a centre of Ukrainian political life, given that many former Ukrainian politicians and officials had found refuge in the city. Having failed to create an independent state, the émigrés in Czechoslovakia tended to blame one another, so the environment in which they found themselves was often acid. Ukrainian political life in Czechoslovakia between the world wars is not the subject of this work; although many of the scholars discussed here had taken part in political life before the Czechoslovakia period, during the emigration most of them restricted themselves to scholarly life, and their engagement in politics before their arrival in Czechoslovakia is not covered in this book.

Prague was also a vibrant Russian émigré scholarly centre, with pre-eminent figures from the Russian academic world, such as renowned linguists Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) and Nikolai Trubetskoi (1890-1938), as well as distinguished Russian Slavist Vladimir Andreevich Frantsev (1867-1942), living and working there. The city was home to famous Russian academic institutions, including the Economic Institute of Professor Prokopovich (Ekonomicheskii kabinet professora Prokopovicha) and the Kondakov Institute of Byzantine Studies (Institut imeni N.P. Kondakova). This study, however, focuses solely on Ukrainian developments.

While writing this monograph I consulted an array of sources. The papers of many émigrés and the archives of major institutions had tragic histories. In 1945, when the Soviet Army entered Prague, vast quantities of material on the activities of the Ukrainian émigrés were confiscated and removed to the Soviet Union. In subsequent years, more émigré archives were transferred to the Soviet Union, the bulk of which ended up in Kyiv in repositories such as the Central State Archive of Higher Organs of Government and Administration of Ukraine (Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukrainy). During the Soviet period, researchers were barred from these collections. The materials that stayed in Czechoslovakia can still be found in archives in Prague and in other cities and towns in the Czech Republic; most of them are in the special collections of the Slavonic Library (Slovanská knihovna), the Museum of Czech Literature Archive (Literární archiv Památníku národního písemnictví), and the National Archives in Prague (Národní archiv), the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic (Archiv Ministerstva zahraničních věcí), and the State District Archives Nymburk based in Lysá nad Labem (Státní okresní archiv Nymburk se sídlem v Lysé nad Labem), with some materials in the Institute of the History of Charles University and the Archive of Charles University (Ústav dějin Univerzity Karlovy a archiv Univerzity Karlovy). A few personal papers made their way to Canada and today are held in Ottawa by Library and Archives Canada, as well as in the Archives of Carleton University. Many documents from the above-mentioned collections were examined for this study. In addition to these, printed materials published by Ukrainian émigré scholars were very useful.

In the 1990s, previously inaccessible archival materials were made available, and scholars in Ukraine made great use of these collections, writing dissertations, books, and articles on various aspects of the lives and activities of Ukrainian émigrés in Czechoslovakia. At the same time, Czech scholars produced important articles, edited volumes, and published conference proceedings and bibliographies that have been valuable sources for this study. Several volumes of printed archival material, especially correspondence, were also utilized, and printed archival guides and bibliographies proved helpful for locating materials in the archives. Encyclopaedias published in Czechoslovakia were searched for articles written by or about Ukrainian émigré scholars. Relevant memoirs written during this period were also examined. Finally, a few interviews were conducted with individuals who had some memory of the events under discussion. All of those who were directly involved in the events have since died, but conversations with people who knew them and knew about their activities were invaluable and helped humanize the subject.

This monograph has nine chapters. Chapter 1 analyses the politics of the Czechoslovak government toward Ukrainians, focusing on the assistance program provided by the government. Also, a brief quantitative analysis of the Ukrainian émigré community in Czechoslovakia is provided, with an emphasis on the earlier years of the emigration. The major reasons for, and developments of, the assistance are

Introduction 9 analysed. Politics involving Ukraine, particularly the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, and Soviet Ukraine, are briefly discussed.

Chapter 2 focuses on the Ukrainian Free University (Ukrains'kyi vil'nyi universytet). Highlighted are its founding in Vienna, the politics surrounding its early development, and its subsequent transfer to Prague with the help of the Czechoslovak government. The university's structure, objectives, and financing are examined, as well as the scholarly activities of its faculty members and its student life. Chapter 3 investigates the Ukrainian technical institution known as the Ukrainian Economic Academy in Czechoslovakia (Ukrains'ka hospodars'ka akademiia v Ch.S.R.). It was founded in Poděbrady and was the first technical institution that aimed to prepare a future generation of engineers and other specialists in the technical professions. Its goals, structure, and financing are all explored. Its students and faculty — both Ukrainian and Czech - are described, and the subsequent transformation of the academy and its affiliated institutions is examined.

The Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, named after Mykhailo Drahomanov (Ukrains'kyi vysokyi pedagogichnyi instytut im. M. Drahomanova) is the subject of chapter 4. It was established in Prague to prepare secondary school teachers for Ukrainian schools in a future independent Ukraine. The institute's goals, structure, and finances are discussed, as well as the studies of its students and the activities of its faculty. Chapter 5 covers the Ukrainian School of Plastic Arts (Ukrains'ka studiia plastychnoho mystetstva), which was known as the "Ukrainian Academy." It had a modest status but played a crucial role in the education and lives of many Ukrainian and other artists. The chapter also highlights the school's participation in various exhibitions in Prague between the wars.

Chapter 6 focuses on the most important scholarly and professional societies and organizations created by Ukrainian émigrés in Czechoslovakia. The role of the umbrella organization known as the Ukrainian Academic Committee (Ukrains'kyi akademichnyi komitet) is discussed, and important activities of the Ukrainian Historical- Philological Society (Ukrains'ke istorychno-filologichne tovarystvo) are highlighted. In this chapter, the renowned Prague Linguistic Circle (Pražský linguisticky kroužek) is also considered, as several Ukrainian émigré scholars took part in its activities. Other societies created by Ukrainian émigré scholars and professionals, including the Ukrainian Law Society (Ukrains'ke pravnyche tovarystvo) and the Union of Ukrainian Doctors in Czechoslovakia (Spilka ukrains'kykh likariv v Chekhoslovachchyni), are also examined. Chapter 7 looks at the archives, libraries, and museums founded by the Ukrainian émigrés as well as the famous Slavonic Library in Prague, an important institution with a large Ukrainian collection. Also discussed are the libraries of the Ukrainian institutions of higher education and, finally, the heritage institutions. The Museum of the Struggle for the Liberation of Ukraine (Muzei vyzvol'noi borot’by Ukrainy), a heritage institution that played an important role in the scholarly life of the Ukrainian community, both in Czechoslovakia and abroad, is discussed. The role of the Ukrainian National Museum and Archive (Ukrains'kyi natsional'nyi muzei-arkhiv) — another museum and archive in Prague — is analysed, as is that of the Ukrainian Historical Institute (Ukrains'kyi istorychnyi kabinet), which came into existence some time later. Chapter 8 is devoted to Ukrainian-language publishing in Czechoslovakia. From the early 1920s to the early 1930s, Prague was a major centre of Ukrainian-language scholarly publishing and was subsidized by the Czechoslovak government. In the 1930s, most privately owned Ukrainian-language publishing houses continued to produce books, but they published primarily historical fiction, children books, and political writings; these developments are also briefly discussed in this chapter.

The ninth and final chapter of this work examines many little-known intellectual connections and relations between the Ukrainian émigré scholars in Czechoslovakia and their colleagues in various other European countries. Cooperation with the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations (La Société des Nations et la coopération intellectuelle) in Paris is discussed. Examined are the scholars' contributions to promoting Ukrainian scholarship in Europe as a whole and the cooperation between the Ukrainians and their colleagues in various countries. Participation in various conferences, works in European scholarly journals in various languages, contributions to encyclopaedias, and books published to promote an understanding of Ukrainian history, literature, and culture in Europe are all considered.

Certain important figures will be described. In this book, their lives and accomplishments are examined in the context of their times. Although some of these people have been studied extensively in the Ukrainian and (to a lesser degree) Czech languages, their names are little-known in English-language scholarship. In general, the world of the Ukrainian émigré intellectuals in Czechoslovakia between the wars is a bright spot in the history of Ukrainian scholarship and culture. This book is an attempt to examine that world for the purpose of fostering a better understanding of the general intellectual and institutional history of Ukraine.