Vatra

Vatra [Ватра; Bonfire]. The name of several Ukrainian student organizations. The most renowned Vatra student society was formed in Lviv in 1892 by some portion of the members of the populist Academic Brotherhood. It reunited with the Academic Brotherhood in 1896 and formed the Academic Hromada (Lviv). A group of Ukrainian students studying mining engineering in Příbram (Czechoslovakia) named themselves the Vatra society in 1898–1914, as did a group of students of veterinary medicine in Lviv in 1926–39.

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