Proswita

Proswita ( Ukrainian Просвіта , lit. "Enlightenment" ), is a Ukrainian cultural organization founded in Lviv in 1868 . It played a major role in the development of the Ukrainian national consciousness in the second half of the 19th century. Branches of the organization were also established beyond the borders of Ukraine in Russia , Western Europe and America . The organization was dissolved by the Soviet authorities. It was re-established in the late 1980s and still exists today.

history

Foundation and heyday

On December 8, 1868, populists who were dissatisfied with the conservatism and Russophilia of Lviv's intellectual society founded the cultural organization “Proswita”. In its first statute, the Proswita described itself as a society whose purpose was to “promote the moral, material and political education of the people” and “ to collect and publish all the fruits of Ukrainian folk literature .” From 1870, the Proswita published theirs Publications in Ukrainian and established committees in counties that grew into branches. With the help of government grants, Proswita published 17 textbooks for Ukrainian schools between 1871 and 1876.

After the society abolished the admission fee in 1876, it began to become available to a larger number of people. Proswita demanded the government to build Ukrainian schools and advocated equal rights for the Ukrainian language in the education system. She published Ukrainian textbooks for use in Galicia and Bukovina . Between 1881 and 1885 the members of the Proswita taught in 320 reading rooms in Galicia. At the initiative of the Proswita, the Bat'kivshchyna newspaper, which is aimed at a rural target group, and the populist political organization Narodna rada were founded.

Lubomirski Palace in Lemberg, seat of the Proswita from 1895

As more and more farmers joined the organization, its structure was redesigned in a new statute in 1891. Autonomous reading societies in rural areas should be linked to the central organization in Lviv through the branches in the counties. The reading rooms were integrated into a network that spanned all of Galicia. From 1891 to 1914 the Proswita taught in 2,944 reading rooms and had 77 branches. In 1914 the Proswita was represented in the reading rooms of 75% of all cities and villages in Galicia and 20% of the Ukrainian population of Galicia belonged to the organization. In 1895 the Proswita acquired the Lubomirski Palace in Lemberg .

In 1887, Ukrainian immigrants founded the first Proswita branch in North America in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania . The first Canadian branch was established in Winnipeg in 1889 . The first branch in South America was founded in 1902 in Curitiba , Brazil . In addition, branches were established in Argentina , Paraguay and Uruguay during the 20th century .

The success of the Proswita also influenced central and eastern Ukraine, which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire . Several prominent writers resident there such as Dmytro Doroshenko , Ivan Nechuj-Levyzkyj and Borys Hrintschenko were anonymous members of the Proswita. They secretly donated money to the organization and made their literary works available for publications. The first official branches of Proswita in central and eastern Ukraine were established in the course of the Russian Revolution in 1905 . Outside of Ukraine, the Empire also had branches in Novocherkassk , Baku and Vladivostok . There were around 40 branches of the Proswita in eastern Ukraine. In 1914, however, all of these branches were banned again for “promoting separatism ”.

Proswita monument in Lviv

At that time, the organization also made “improving the common good of the Ukrainian people” its task. She participated in the establishment of loan brokerage , the improvement of agricultural cultivation methods and published literature on plant cultivation . She also supported the Galician agricultural district associations. In 1912 Proswita had 540 shops, 339 small credit agencies and 121 warehouses. She also founded several schools, including a business school in Lviv and an agricultural school in Myluwannja in what is now Tysmenyzja Rajon . She has also given grants to crop science and home economics students . Her best students (40 in the period 1907-1914) were sent abroad to study. In the period from 1868 to 1918, Proswita had a total of 2,941,115 brochures printed on subjects such as history, geography, economy, trade, medicine and religion. In the period from 1904 to 1914, the organization published several book series of Ukrainian literature, which were printed several hundred thousand times. The members of Proswita also published their works in cultural magazines such as Pys'mo z Prosvity and Chytal'nia , whose editors included Iwan Franko , Kost Lewyzkyj and Hnat Chotkewytsch . By 1914, half of all Proswita's reading rooms had their own libraries. In 1909 the organization converted its book collections into a public lending library, which in 1935 contained 16,900 volumes. The government of Galicia donated a total of 363,000 crowns to the Proswita from 1870 to 1914 . The government of Vienna donated a total of 42,000 kroner from 1906 to 1909.

Until 1914 the Proswita was the most important Ukrainian organization in Galicia. It played a central role in the development of the national consciousness of the Ukrainian people and thus also influenced the restoration of the Ukrainian state .

Decline after World War I and dissolution in the Soviet Union

The buildings and libraries of the Proswita suffered considerable damage in the First World War . Most of the reading rooms have been closed. Until 1921, the Polish authorities prohibited their reopening. Proswita's funds lost value and state subsidies were completely discontinued. After a new constitution was accepted in the Polish state in 1924, the organization's reading rooms were reopened. However, the Polish authorities continued to have reservations about the Proswita. In 1936 a branch and 135 reading rooms were closed. The organization was banned from expanding its activities in the north-western regions of Volhynia and Podlasie . Nevertheless, the number of reading rooms and members of the Proswita increased steadily. By 1939 it had 360,000 members.

The Proswita in central and eastern Ukraine strengthened again through the February Revolution of 1917 . On September 20, 1917, the first "All-Ukrainian Proswita Conference" was held in Kiev , which was supposed to coordinate the activities of the branches centrally. The influence of the organization reached as far as the Kuban area at that time . From 1917 to 1922, the Proswita reading rooms were the centers of Ukrainian national life. Since the Soviet authorities viewed the branches of the Proswita as centers of the national Ukrainian resistance, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine passed a resolution in July 1920 to gain control of the organization and integrate it into the state structures. However, this measure was unsuccessful. By 1921 the number of branches of Proswita rose to 4,500 and the number of members to 400,000. A year later, at a meeting of the governors of Ukraine, it was decided to close the Proswita branches and prohibit their activities. Only 573 branches remained, each of which was converted into "Soviet" proswitas. The branches in the Russian SFSR were also closed.

In 1921 a proswitage company was founded in Zagreb based on the model of the Lviv organization, which still had branches in Belgrade , Bosnia and Slovenia . These were closed again in 1944 by the new Soviet government. In the rest of Europe, Galician immigrants established further branches of the Proswita in Vienna and France during the interwar period .

After the German Reich conquered Galicia in 1941 , it allowed the reading rooms to be reopened under strict surveillance.

New establishment during the collapse of the Soviet Union

Under the influence of perestroika , the re-establishment of Proswita was planned in Kiev in December 1988. The new organization was dedicated to “revitalizing Ukrainian culture through publications, lectures and educational activities”. At a general assembly in October 1991, shortly before the final collapse of the Soviet Union , the organization was renamed "All-Ukrainian Association of Enlightenment".

Commemorative coins for the 140th anniversary of the Proswita

When the journalist Oles Busyna, who works for the newspaper Kievsky Wedemosti , wrote negative articles about Taras Shevchenko in 2001 , the Ukrainian Writers' Association and the Proswita sued him for it. In March 2011, the Zaporizhia Oblast Regional Parliament won a trial for the promotion of the Russian language. The local representation of the Proswita appealed against it. According to the head of Proswita Pavlo Movchan, the regional parliament violated the country's constitution because it held its official meetings in Russian.

Ukraine crisis in 2014

After the Crimean peninsula fell to Russia in March 2014 , the Prosvita branch there was banned on charges of being a “separatist organization”. Also in the eastern Ukraine , the prosvita was in the crisis dragged. On March 14, pro-Russian demonstrators stormed the Prosvita headquarters in Kharkiv and were subsequently shot by unidentified persons. The chairman of Proswita in Donetsk Oblast Valery Sado was kidnapped by masked gunmen on May 7 in Krasnyj Lyman . His body was found the next day. On June 23, the chairman of the Luhansk Prosvita Volodymyr Semystjaga was captured by the People's Militia of the Lugansk People's Republic .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Proswita . Encyclopedia PWN.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Prosvita . Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine .
3. ↑ The Lubomyrski Palace . lviv.travel/de. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
4. ↑ Alena Janatková, Hanna Kozinska-Witt. Living in the big city, 1900-1939: Housing situation and modernization in a European comparison . Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006. ISBN 3515083456 . Page 366.
5. ^ Free Association for Further Education in Political Science in Vienna. Economic conditions in Galicia in the present . Commission at W. Braumüller, 1913. Page 81. Full text at archive.org.
6. ↑ Bernhard Chiari, Jerzy Kochanowski. The Polish Home Army: History and Myth of the Armia Krajowa since World War II . Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3486567152 . Page 98.
7. ↑ Історія Просвіти . prosvitjanyn.org.ua.
8. ↑ The Invalids of Creation . The New Zurich Times. March 30, 2001. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
9. ↑ South Ukrainian regional parliament wins court hearing over promotion of Russian language . ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. radioukr.com.ua. March 21, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2014. 
10. ↑ Thomas Franke. Russia's fear of the Siberian separatists . Deutschlandfunk. August 15, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
11. ↑ Ulrich Heyden. "Right Sector" murders in Kharkov, eastern Ukraine . Hot. March 17, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
12. ↑ Andreas Stein. Brother at the gates . Jungle World. March 20, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
13. ↑ Florian Hassel. Rule of Terror in the Donetsk People's Republic . Southgerman newspaper. May 9, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
14. ^ Proswita chief lives in Luhansk Oblast Volodymyr Semystjaga . ukrinform.ua. July 2, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2014.