Ukrainian educational societies

Ukrainian educational societies (Українські освітні товариства; Ukrainski osvitni tovarystva, or УОТ; UOTs). Local Ukrainian societies for popular education and cultural work that were active in the Generalgouvernement in 1940–4. They replaced the Prosvita societies, the Ridna Khata society, and the Kachkovsky Society, which had been banned by the German authorities. The UOTs were independent organizations with no direct organizational connections to one another. Their work, however, was co-ordinated at a regional level by a district Ukrainian relief committee (UDK), which in turn reported to the cultural department of the Ukrainian Central Committee (UTsK), which was based in Cracow. The UOTs provided the only legal means of carrying out broad-based educational and cultural work for the general Ukrainian population. Only a UOT, for example, could sponsor a women’s or a youth group (see Ukrainian Youth Educational Societies).

UOTs existed in virtually every locality of the Generalgouvernement which had Ukrainian inhabitants. By early 1943 there were 4,000 UOTs with a combined membership of 230,000. A third of them had their own buildings, and there were 2,200 libraries, holding over 360,000 volumes (the figure would have been higher if many books had not been destroyed in 1939–41 during the Soviet occupation). The UOTs had 1,770 drama groups (which gave approximately 7,350 performances) and 870 choral groups in addition to women’s groups and youth sections, kindergartens, and adult literacy courses. The heads of the UOTs were usually young local peasants. The UOTs received assistance from the cultural department of the Ukrainian Central Committee, which prepared programs and materials for them and offered leadership training courses. The UDKs had permanent staffs who advised and helped co-ordinate the work of the UOTs. In many respects the UOTs resembled the prewar Prosvita societies.

After 1943 the activities of the UOTs declined as many of their leading figures were deported to Germany for forced labor as Ostarbeiter or enlisted in the Division Galizien. With the second Soviet occupation of Galicia (and then Poland) in 1944, they ceased to exist.

Volodymyr Kubijovyč

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