Shevchenko Scientific Society

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Shevchenko Scientific Society building in New York City.

Entrance to the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York City.

The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian learned society 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 controlled Ukraine, from the beginning, it attracted the financial and intellectual support of writers and patrons of Ukrainian background 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. By 1914, several hundred volumes of scholarly research and notices had been published by the society including over a hundred volumes of its Zapysky.

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 Polish rule, the society lost its government subsidies, but managed to carry on a precarious existence. During this period, its major contributors were the literary historians, Vasyl Shchurat and Kyrylo Studynsky, and the historian, Ivan Krypiakevych. During this period, one of the most important projects of the society was the publication of the first general alphabetic encyclopedia in the Ukrainian language.

In 1939, upon their occupation of Lviv, the Soviets dissolved the society. Many of its members were arrested and either exiled to the Gulag or executed. 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 center 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.

During its period in emigration, the major project of the society was again an encyclopedia. Under the editorship of Volodymyr Kubiyovych, it published a great Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva (Encyclopedia of Knowledge about Ukraine) in four parts: a Ukrainian language thematic encyclopedia in three volumes, a Ukrainian language alphabetic encyclopedia in eleven volumes, an English language thematic encyclopedia in two volumes, and an English language alphabetic one in five volumes. The last compilation, published in Canada under the title Encyclopedia of Ukraine is presently being put on-line.

In 1989, the society was reactivated in the Ukrainian homeland (in Lviv) and once again undertook a large-scale research and publication program. Branches were soon founded in other Ukrainian cities and membership exceeded a thousand, including 125 full voting members.