Ridna Khata

Ridna Khata (Рідна хата; Native Home). A cultural and educational society in the Kholm region and Podlachia established in Kholm in 1920. Ridna Khata was modeled on the Prosvita society in Lviv, which was not permitted to expand its organization into the so-called northwestern Ukrainian lands. It was banned by the Polish authorities in 1921 but continued to operate semisecretly until 1922. That year it was registered as the Ridna Khata Ruthenian Charitable Society, a name which allowed it to emphasize its charitable profile and deflect attention from its cultural-educational purpose, and which downplayed (before officialdom) the fact that it was a Ukrainian organization. The head office was located in Kholm, where the society owned its own building and boasted a semiprofessional theater (directed by D. Krykh), a choir, and a co-operative bookstore called Buh. Its branches operated libraries, reading rooms, amateur drama groups and choirs, co-operatives, and Ukrainian languages classes. By 1927 there were 90 branches, and by 1930 approximately 125, most of them in Volodava (33), Hrubeshiv (32), Kholm (20), and Tomaszów Lubelski (20) counties. The other counties in the region had two to six branches. The leading members of Ridna Khata were Anatolii Vasynchuk and Pavlo Vasynchuk, Yakiv Voitiuk, Semen Liubarsky, Stepan Makivka, Ivan Pasternak, O. Rochniak, and K. Soshynsky (its permanent secretary). By the end of the 1920s members of the left faction of Sel-Rob, led by S. Makivka, gained control of the society. This development allowed the Polish authorities to dissolve the group under the pretext that it had become a communist front organization.

During its 10-year existence the Ridna Khata society strengthened Ukrainian national consciousness in the Kholm region and Podlachia. After the partition of Poland in 1939, the organization revived, and the number of branches quickly exceeded the 1930 figure. In 1940 the association was banned, and its branches were converted into Ukrainian educational societies by the authorities of the Generalgouvernement.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]