Ukrainian Central Co-operative Committee

Ukrainian Central Co-operative Committee [Центральний український кооперативний комітет; Tsentralnyi ukrainskyi kooperatyvnyi komitet, or Коопцентр; Kooptsentr, aka Central Ukrainian Co-operative Committee]. The central organization of the co-operative movement in Ukraine, established in Kyiv as a temporary body in April 1917 and as a permanent body in September 1918. It represented the whole Ukrainian co-operative movement at home and abroad, defended the interests of co-operatives in government circles, trained co-operative workers, audited individual co-operatives, organized conferences and congresses, collected statistics on co-operatives, and developed and propagated the theory of co-operation. Its activities were organized into three sections, organizational-legal, economic-statistical, and cultural-educational. Membership was restricted to co-operative associations and unions. The board of directors was headed by Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovsky, assisted by Kost Matsiievych; the executive was headed by Borys Martos. By the end of 1918 Kooptsentr represented 45 credit unions, 110 consumer, 31 mixed, 4 agricultural, and 62 other co-operative unions. A year later there were almost 400 unions and 30,000 individual co-operatives in Ukraine. The committee published the journal Ukraïns’ka kooperatsiia and then, irregularly, a bulletin. In 1919 its courses were reorganized into the Tuhan-Baranovsky Co-operative Institute, the first school of its kind in the world. Kooptsentr was dissolved by the Soviet authorities in 1921.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]