Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw

Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw [Український науковий інститут у Варшаві; Ukrainskyi naukovyi instytut u Varshavi]. A research institution established in Warsaw in 1928 (formally in 1930) through the efforts of the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic. It was funded by the Polish Ministry of Religious Faiths and Education as an autonomous Ukrainian studies scientific research institute. The directors were Oleksander Lototsky (until January 1939) and Andrii Yakovliv, the secretary-general was Stepan Smal-Stotsky, and the board of directors included Bohdan Lepky, Yevhen Glovinsky, and Valentyn Sadovsky. The institute was divided into commissions and seminars, and most of its members were émigré or Galician scholars.

The institute supported research on topics in Ukrainian studies that it was not possible to pursue freely in Soviet Ukraine, and published more books (over 70 volumes) than any other interwar émigré or Western Ukrainian scholarly publisher. In its series Pratsi Ukrainskoho naukovoho instytutu (55 volumes) were Dmytro Doroshenko’s survey history of Ukraine (2 vols, 1932–3), Hetman Pylyp Orlyk’s diary (ed Jan Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, 1936), Borys Krupnytsky’s book on Orlyk (1938), the article and document collection Mazepa (2 vols, ed Roman Smal-Stotsky, 1938), Andrii Yakovliv’s book on 17th- and 18th-century Ukrainian-Russian treaties (1934), an annotated volume of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s correspondence with the Hromada of Kyiv (1938), Oleksander Dotsenko’s book on the 1920 First Winter Campaign of the UNR Army (1932) and a collection of documents pertaining to the campaign (ed Pavlo Shandruk, 1933), Oleksander Lototsky’s memoirs (3 vols, 1932–4) and books on the Ukrainian sources of canon law (1931) and on the principles and history of autocephaly (2 vols, 1935, 1938), a volume of memoirs by Leon Wasilewski, Martyrii Halyn, Stanisław Stempowski, A. Topchibashi, and Georges Tabouis (1932), Konstantyn Chekhovych’s book on Oleksander Potebnia (1931), Ivan Zilynsky’s map of Ukrainian dialects with commentaries (1933), Stepan Smal-Stotsky’s book of interpretations of Taras Shevchenko (1935) and book on the Ukrainian language under Soviet rule (1936), a collection of memoirs and articles about the late 19th-century Ukrainian movement in the Russian Empire (2 vols, 1939), collections of articles on Soviet Ukrainian demography (by Tymish Olesiiuk, O. Pytel, Valentyn Sadovsky, and O. Chubenko, 1931) and economics (by Yevhen Glovinsky, Kost Matsiievych, and Sadovsky, 1931–6), a book of Soviet Ukrainian statistical tables (ed Olesiiuk, 1930), Ivan Ivasiuk’s book on credit co-operatives in Ukraine (1933), Vasyl Ivanys’s two books on energy and industry in Ukraine and northern Caucasia (1933), Ivan Shovheniv’s book on water management in the Dnipro River Basin (1934), Sadovsky’s book on agricultural labor in Soviet Ukraine (1935), Stepan Siropolko’s book on public education in Soviet Ukraine (1934), Wasilewski’s book in Polish on the Ukrainian question (1934), Sadovsky’s book on Soviet nationality policy in Ukraine (1937), Borys Ivanytsky’s book on Ukraine’s forests and forest economy (2 vols, 1936), Dmytro Chyzhevsky’s book on Hryhorii Skovoroda (1934), S. Kuczyński’s book in Polish on the Chernihiv and Novhorod-Siverskyi lands under Lithuanian rule (1936), and Shevchenko’s collected works with critical articles and notes (13 of 16 planned vols, ed Pavlo Zaitsev, 1934–9), as well as Ukrainian translations of the Psalter (1936) and three liturgical books prepared by a commission headed by Metropolitan Dionisii Valedinsky (1936–9). Other publications included a book of Shevchenko’s poems in Polish translation (1936), two brochures on the institute’s activities (in Ukrainian, Polish, and French, 1935, 1939) and two on the activities of its Economic Seminar (1935, 1936), and the Bulletin de la commission pour l'étude des problèmes polono-ukrainiens (5 issues, 1935–8). Approximately 35 prepared volumes were never published. After the German occupation of Warsaw in 1939, the institute was closed down, and its valuable 10,000-volume library and archive holdings perished.

Volodymyr Kubijovyč

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