Petliura Ukrainian Library

Petliura Ukrainian Library [Українська бібліотека ім. Симона Петлюри; Ukrainska biblioteka im. Symona Petliury; French: Bibliothèque Ukrainienne Symon Petlura à Paris]. Established in Paris in 1926 and officially opened in 1929. By 1940 it had approximately 15,000 books, documents, and museum exhibits. In January 1941 the Germans confiscated its holdings and took them to the environs of Leipzig (which became a Soviet zone at the end of the Second World War), from which location they were never recovered. In 1946 the library reopened, and in 1958 it began an active campaign of renovation and acquisition. The number of books in its collection increased from 3,000 in the early 1950s to 10,000 in 1958, 12,000 in 1971, 18,000 in 1979 (not including 6,000 duplicates, 105 periodicals, and 30 newspapers), and today over 30,000. The library also contains documents on Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20) and some of the archives of the diplomatic missions of the Ukrainian National Republic. It has published an informative bulletin, biannually from 1959 and annually from 1980 (53 issues by 1990). A museum of Symon Petliura’s personal effects and of military insignia from 1917–20 is also housed on the premises of the library. The presidents of the library council have been Viacheslav Prokopovych (1926–42), Ilarion Kosenko (1942–50), Oleksander Udovychenko (1950–7), Ye. Prokopovych (1957–64), Petro Plevako (1964–8), Pavlo Shumovsky (1968–81), Yu. Yeremiiv (1981–3), Arkadii Zhukovsky (1983–97), and Yaroslava Yosypyshyn (since 1998). The library’s directors and the editors of its Informatsiinyi biuleten' have been Ivan Rudychiv, Hryhorii Dovzhenko, P. Yosypyshyn (1958–89), V. Mykhalchuk (1989–97), and Yaroslava Yosypyshyn (since 1998).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Joukovsky, A. ‘Petliura Library in Paris,’ HUS, 14, no. 1/2 (June 1990)

[This article was updated in 2019.]