Ukrainian Institute of Sociology

Ukrainian Institute of Sociology (Укранський інститут громадознавства; Ukrainskyi instytut hromadoznavstva). An émigré institution founded in November 1924 in Prague on the initiative of members of the Ukrainian Sociological Society (est October 1923 in Prague). This scientific research institute had 33 full members and 15 corresponding members. The director and leading figure was Mykyta Shapoval; when he died in 1932, the institute virtually ceased to exist. The institute included in its program of research, lectures, and seminars all branches of the social sciences; maintained a library of 8,000 volumes (2,500 were from Shapoval’s private collection); ran the Ukrainian National Museum and Archives in Prague (est 1923); and organized the Ukrainian Workers’ University, a correspondence school with over 30 courses and some 300 students (primarily émigré workers and peasants). The journal Nova Ukraïna (Prague) and the publishing house Vilna Spilka were associated with the institute. The institute published 46 studies and reports and the first Ukrainian sociological journal, Suspil'stvo (three issues, 1925–7), which contained contributions by Western Ukrainian sociologists.

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