Memorial museums

Memorial museums [меморіяльні музеї; memorialni muzei]. In Soviet Ukraine many museums dedicated to the lives and contributions of prominent figures were created, usually in buildings where the persons so honored had lived or worked. Besides over 25 state-funded literary memorial museums dedicated to prominent Ukrainian writers, other state-funded museums were established to commemorate (1) scholars and scientists, such as the Danylo Zabolotny Museum in Zabolotne, Kryzhopil raion, Vinnytsia oblast (est 1929), the Nikolai Pirogov Museum in Vyshnia (now in Vinnytsia) (est 1947), the Anton Makarenko Museum in Kremenchuk (est 1951), the Mykola Kybalchych Museum in Korop, Chernihiv oblast (est 1959), the Dmytro Yavornytsky Museum in Dnipropetrovsk (est 1964), the Volodymyr Hnatiuk Museum in Velesniv, Monastyryska raion, Ternopil oblast (est 1969), the Serhii Korolov Museum in Zhytomyr (est 1970), the Volodymyr Zabolotny Museum in Pereiaslav, Kyiv oblast, the Hryhorii Skovoroda museums in Skovorodynivka near Zolochiv, Kharkiv oblast, Chornukhy, Poltava oblast, and Pereiaslav; and the Vasyl Sukhomlynsky Museum in Pavlysh, Onufriivka raion, Kirovohrad oblast; (2) artists, such as the Hryhorii Svitlytsky Museum in Kyiv (est 1958, supervised by the Museum of Kyiv's History), the Ilia Repin Museum in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv oblast (est 1969), the Olena Kulchytska Museum in Lviv (est 1971), the Oleksa Novakivsky Museum in Lviv (est 1972), and the Ivan Trush Museum in Lviv; (3) composers, such as the Viktor Kosenko Museum in Kyiv (est 1964) and the Mykola Lysenko Museum in Kyiv (est 1980); (4) actors and performers, such as the Panas Saksahansky Museum in Kamiano-Kostuvate, Bratsk raion, Mykolaiv oblast, the Les Kurbas Museum in Staryi Skalat, Ternopil oblast (est 1988), and the Solomiia Krushelnytska Museum in Bila, Ternopil raion (est 1963); (5) a pioneering Ukrainian printer, the Ivan Fedorovych (Fedorov) Museum in Lviv (est 1977); (6) Communist party figures, such as the Vladimir Lenin museums in Kyiv (est 1938) and Lviv (est 1950), the Kliment Voroshilov Museum in Lysychansk, Luhansk oblast, the Oleksandr Tsiurupa Museum in Tsiurupynske, Kherson oblast, the Maurice Thorez Museum in Torez, Donetsk oblast (est 1965), the Ulianov Family Museum in Kyiv (est 1977), and the Andrei Zhdanov Museum in Mariupol (named Zhdanov from 1948 to 1989), Donetsk oblast; and (7) Soviet military figures, such as the Mykola Shchors Museum in Shchors, Chernihiv oblast (est 1943), the Mykola Kuznetsov Museum in Rivne, and the Mykhailo Kyrponos Museum in Vertiivka, Nizhyn raion, Chernihiv oblast. The Kosyi Kaponir Museum (est 1971 on the grounds of a former tsarist prison) and the Hall No. 19 Memorial Complex of the History of the 1941–5 Great Patriotic War (est 1981) were established as branches of the Historical Museum of the Ukrainian SSR in Kyiv. A few museums were dedicated to prominent Russian cultural figures who were active in Ukraine, such as the Anton Chekhov Museum in Yalta (est 1904); the Korolenko museums in Poltava (est 1928) and Zhytomyr (est 1973); the Aleksandr Pushkin and Peter Tchaikovsky Museum in Kamianka (Cherkasy oblast) (est 1937), containing a permanent exhibition dedicated to the Decembrists in Ukraine; and the Maksimilian Voloshin Museum in Planerske, Crimea oblast. The Sholom Aleichem Museum in Pereiaslav was established in 1978. Hundreds of publicly funded ‘people's museums’ in Ukraine also had memorial rooms dedicated to cultural and Party figures and Soviet partisans.

Roman Senkus

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]