Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for Independence in Prague

Why this history is central to the cultural atlas

The Museum of Ukraine’s Struggle for Independence in Prague is one of interwar emigration’s most outstanding Ukrainian documentary projects. Established in 1925, it collected archives of Ukrainian National Republic diplomacy, military units and émigré societies, periodicals, visual art, photographs, libraries and material artefacts. Its history is simultaneously one of Ukrainian-Czech institutional connections and archives’ difficult fate during the war and after 1948. [M01; M02; M03]

Visual narrative: “The archive of a state they sought to preserve”. From the first museum bulletin and accession book of 1925 through the Ukrainian House, bombing and dispersal of collections to present archival references. This allows a sequence of documented decisions to be shown, rather than abstract “memory”. [M01; M04]

Organisation and four departments

Professors of the Ukrainian Free University and members of the political emigration created the museum. Its distinctive feature was voluntary donation of documents and objects by people directly involved in the state-building events of 1917–1921. TsDAHO lists four historical departments: political-diplomatic, military, émigré and general. The general department included material objects, photographs, Ukrainian press and libraries. [M01; M03]

This structure provided a practical way to preserve an archive in emigration. The museum needed funds for premises, document description, shipping crates and publishing information. According to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, its main support came from voluntary donations, particularly from North American Ukrainians; individual benefactors named include Yakiv Makohon and Kalenyk Lysiuk. This confirms an international funding network, but does not justify creating a personal-friendship relationship between every donor and the director. [M03]

The museum is not the society. Society R0050 had members and governing bodies, while museum R0040 had exhibitions, a library, an archive and a director. Equating the two legal names requires the statute; until checked, the database model has a founded_and_owned_by relationship. [M01; M03]

Collections: what objects were preserved

Diplomatic archives. Materials from the UNR’s foreign missions, ZUNR representations and diplomatic correspondence. These suit a digital exhibition mapping Ukrainian diplomacy in Europe, but every document needs authorship, a date, its original archive and accession route. [M01; M03]

Military and émigré holdings. Documents of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, internment camps, veterans’ communities, assistance committees and youth associations. Some early Plast correspondence from 1925–1928 is now described at TsDAHO (fond 269, file 984), so the museum network directly intersects with research on SUPE (R0048), but does not mean the museum directed SUPE. [M01; M08]

Art and print collections. According to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, the museum had around 1200 periodicals, over 1400 prints and a library comprising more than 70 separate book collections. These figures belong to a historical description, rather than today’s fond 269. Their inventory boundaries and counts as of a particular year need confirmation through original catalogues. [M03]

People in the archive. One person’s documents can be held in several countries. Each record needs original_creator, collection_provenance, current_holding_institution, archive_reference, transfer_event fields. Such a provenance graph can reconstruct an archive’s route instead of misleading visitors with one notional “Museum archive” point. [M01; M02]

Premises, the Ukrainian House and the press

The museum initially used rented rooms, with some holdings in auxiliary repositories. A building adapted for museum work was purchased in 1938 and opened in 1939. TsDAHO’s exhibition presents a May 1938 photograph of the Ukrainian House — a valuable exhibit for a future façade reconstruction, but its map location must be established from cadastral and address materials. [M03; M04]

The museum published the information bulletin «Вісти Музею визвольної боротьби України»; the first page of its first issue, July 1925, survives at TsDAHO (fond 269, inventory 1, file 456, folio 1). Periodicals enable accessions, exhibitions and donors to be checked against specific issues, rather than memoirs alone. [M04]

War, losses and the documents’ postwar fate

Bombing. In February 1945 an air raid damaged the museum building, its holdings and premises. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine estimates losses at approximately a quarter of the collections; this is a secondary estimate requiring comparison with postwar inventory reports. The rest was relocated for storage, including to the Klementinum’s cellars and departmental archives. [M02; M03]

1945–1948. According to TsDAHO, the institution received the name “Ukrainian Museum” in November 1945. After D. Antonovych’s death, Symon Narizhny took charge. Activities proceeded under new political conditions, and according to researcher Mykola Mushynka’s reconstruction the museum officially closed on 26 March 1948. Treating this as one act of complete confiscation of all holdings is incorrect: confiscation, relocation and transfer occurred in several stages. [M01; M05]

Archival transfers after 1948. TsDAHO reports transfers of materials to the USSR in 1948, 1958 and 1983, and the receipt of 117 boxes of unarranged documents from the Ukrainian SSR’s KGB in 1988. Some holdings are in other Ukrainian and Czech state archives. Fond 269 also contains individual materials not originating in the original museum, so concluding that “all 1649 files belonged to the museum in 1945” is an error. [M01]

Specific references that can actually be requested

References are based on published inventories and exhibitions, rather than physical examination of every file. [M01; M04; M08]

Typed relationships and network history

Contradictions and key errors to avoid