Naukova Dumka

Naukova Dumka («Наукова думка»; Scientific Thought). The publishing house of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv. Founded in 1922 as part of the Editorial-Publishing Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, in 1927 it became the Publishing House of the VUAN (from 1936, AN URSR, from 1991 ANU, and from 1994 NANU). In 1964 it assumed its present name. The most important scholarly and academic publishing house in Ukraine, each year it has issued numerous monographs in the humanities and social, technical, and pure sciences; journals (52 in 1989); and serial publications (81 in 1989). It has released many important publications, including histories of the Ukrainian SSR (10 vols, 1977–9) and of Ukrainian literature (8 vols, 1967–71); a major Ukrainian dictionary (11 vols, 1970–80); academic editions of the collected works of Taras Shevchenko (10 vols, 1939–64; 12 vols, 1989–) and Ivan Franko (50 vols, 1976–86); Fauna Ukraïny (40 vols, 1956–); and Flora URSR (12 vols, 1936–65). During the Soviet period, officially, as the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Naukova Dumka was not subject to the usual Soviet censorship. In practice this meant little, and works issued by it generally conformed to the Party line and official dictates on scholarship. In the decades preceding the 1980s it was subject to increasing Russification, and most of its publications, especially in the natural and applied sciences, appeared in Russian. In the 1980s it published approximately 700 titles each year, written by staff members of over 80 AN URSR institutes. At that time, Naukova Dumka had over 500 employees. The situation in the Naukova Dumka changed significantly with the lifting of censorship following the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence. At the same time, with considerably limited funding, the publishing house greatly reduced the number of its publications. Among the most important projects completed or undertaken by Naukova Dumka since independence have been the publication of 5-volume (in 9 books) Istoriia ukraїns'koї kul'tury [The History of Ukrainian Culture] and a projected publication of a 25-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language.

[This article was updated in 2018.]