Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University

Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University (Kamianets-Podilskyi derzhavnyi ukrainskyi universytet). An institution of higher education founded in Kamianets-Podilskyi in the period of Ukraine's independence [see Struggle for Independence (1917–20)]. It was organized thanks to the initiative of gubernial zemstvo and municipal council leaders such as Olimpiia Pashchenko-Shulminska, V. Prykhodko, Kost Solukha, and O. Shulminsky, and was chartered by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky on 22 October 1918. Ivan Ohiienko, one of the university's organizers, became rector. It was divided into five faculties: history and philology (headed by Leonid Biletsky), natural sciences and mathematics (headed by P. Buczyński), theology (headed by Vasyl Bidnov), law (opened in fall 1919 and headed by Kharyton Lebid-Yurchyk), and agriculture (opened in fall 1919 and headed by S. Bachynsky). By summer 1920 there were 65 scholars—including 11 professors and 25 docents—on the faculty, and the enrollment, 80 percent of which was Ukrainian, reached 1,400. Besides the names mentioned above, the more prominent faculty members included Dmytro Doroshenko, Mykhailo Drai-Khmara, Mykhailo Fedorov, Pylyp Klymenko, Oleksander Mytsiuk, Mykola Plevako, Serhii Ostapenko, M. Vikul, and the chaplain, Archpriest Yevtym Sitsinsky. When the Bolsheviks gained control of the city at the end of 1920, the theology and law faculties were abolished. In the following year the other faculties were separated and reorganized into the Kamianets-Podilskyi Institute of People's Education and the Kamianets-Podilskyi Agricultural Institute. Some of the professors emigrated and joined the faculties of Ukrainian higher schools in Prague (see Ukrainian Free University, and Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute) or the staff of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw and the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin. Others stayed behind and continued to teach at the new institutes. Many of them were purged in the 1930s and disappeared in prison or exile. (See also Kamianets-Podilskyi National University.)