Shevchenko Scientific Society

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The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian learned institution devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. It was founded in 1873 in Lviv (Lemberg), the capital of the Austrian province of Galicia, as a literary society devoted to the promotion of Ukrainian language literature. Since publication in the Ukrainian language was at that time prohibited in Russian Ukraine, from the beginning, it attracted the financial and intellectual support of writers and patrons from the Russian Empire.

In 1893, it was transformed into a scholarly institution, and its periodical, the Zapysky NTSh (Memoirs of the Shevchenko Scientific Society) began to be published. Under the presidency of the historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, it greatly expanded its activities, contributing to both the humanities and the physical sciences, law and medicine, but most especially to Ukrainian studies, and could soon claim to be a kind of unofficial Academy of Sciences for the Ukrainian people living on both sides of the Russian-Austrian border. During this period, one of its most prolific contributors was the poet, folklorist, and literary historian Ivan Franko.

The First World War interrupted the society's activities, and at the war's end, eastern Galicia, including Lviv, was incorporated into the new Polish Republic. Under the Polish regime, the society lost its government subsidies, but managed to carry on a precarious existence. During this period, its major contributors were the literary historians, V. Shchurat and K. Studynsky, and the historian, Ivan Krypiakevych.

In 1939, upon their occupation of Lviv, the Soviets dissolved the society. During the German occupation, it still could not function openly. In 1947, on the initiative of the geographer, Volodymyr Kubiyovych, it was refounded as an emigre scholarly society in Munich; the European centre of the Society was later transferred to Paris. Branches were founded in New York (1947), Toronto (1949), and Australia (1950) and throughout the Cold War it functioned as a federation of semi-independent societies.

In 1989, it was reactivated in the Ukrainian homeland (in Lviv) and once again undertook a large-scale research and publication program.