Peremyshl State Gymnasium

Peremyshl State Gymnasium [Перемиська державна гімназія; Peremyska derzhavna himnaziia]. The second Ukrainian-language gymnasium to be opened in Galicia, preceded only by the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv. Founded in 1888 in Peremyshl as a Ukrainian-language division of a Polish gymnasium, in 1895 it became an independent classical gymnasium, called the Second Imperial Gymnasium in Peremyshl, with a full eight classes. After the First World War, under Polish rule, the gymnasium was renamed the State Gymnasium in Peremyshl with the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) Language of Instruction. After the school reforms of 1932 the gymnasium was reorganized into a four-year general education gymnasium and a two-year lyceum with two faculties, of humanities and of natural sciences and mathematics. The gymnasium was closed shortly after the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine.

The gymnasium's students came mostly from the Ukrainian-Polish borderlands and from the Lemko region. Some students were also from Poland proper, although (in the interwar period) they were usually the children of refugees from Soviet-occupied Ukraine. Throughout its history the institution was one of the largest and most important Ukrainian-language gymnasiums in Galicia. The gymnasium opened with 329 students in 1895; by 1912 its 1,013 students were being taught by 41 teachers. By the First World War the gymnasium had graduated 912 students. In its first 40 years of operation (1896–1936), 2,452 students, including 114 Jews, graduated from the school, almost all of them men.

The gymnasium's directors included Hryhorii Tsehlynsky (1888–1910), Andrii Alyskevych (1910–17), R. Hamchykevych (1919–24), and Stepan Shakh (1932–9); instructors included prominent scientists, authors, artists, and community and political activists.

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