Scientific Research on Czech Presence in Ukraine in the 1920s

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the scientific work on the study of Ukrainian Czechs in the 1920s. The body of work under analysis is found to highlight the reasons and premises for the growing interest in the state and society as driving issues of Czech colonization of Ukrainian lands. The research stems from the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, local scientists and historians, and public activists. The text deals with the Czech national-cultural revival in Ukraine in the 1920s, discussing the history, economic activity, culture, traditions, and lifestyle of Ukranian Czechs. A significant contribution to the work has been made by Volodymyr Kravchenko, Head of the Ethnographic Department of the Volhynia State Research Museum in Zhytomyr, and his assistant and postgraduate student Nykanor Dmytruk, as well as Kornii Cherviak, Director of the Korosten Museum, Antonín Vodseďálek, Head of the seminar for Czech teachers at the Zhytomyr Education Institute, Stefan Křižánek, writer and inventor from the village of Krošna Česká, and others. This work would not have been possible without the fundamental achievements of Yevhen Rykhlik, a prominent Ukrainian Slavic-scientist of Czech origin as well as a famous philologist, ethnologist, teacher and public figure. Rykhlik founded and directed the Cabinet of National Minorities of Ukraine, carried out a number of expeditions to Czech settlements, collected an archive of the Czech press, organised the collection of materials on Czech colonization of Ukrainian lands, and published scientific articles on the subject. He also contributed to the field with his monograph “Czechs of Volhynia”, which was destroyed in the early 1930s.