Page:Oleksander Yakovych Shulhyn - The Problems of the Ukraine (1919).djvu/17

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— 11 —

At the University of Lemberg, about fifteen courses of lectures were taken in Ukrainian.

In 1905, in the Universities of Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa, courses in Ukrainian sciences were authorised, but it was not long before they were forbidden. After the Revolution of 1917, a Ukrainian University was inaugurated at Kiev, which, at the same time, worked with the old Russian University. At Kamenetz-Podolsk a national university was also inaugurated. At Poltava, the Faculty of Letters was opened, and at Kiev the Scientific Academy. In all the Russian Universities of the Ukraine Chairs were founded for the studies of the country.

One of the things in which Ukraine suffered most cruelly was the prohibition of national schools. It is only in Galicia and in the Bukovina that a primary and secondary school have existed for long, and, as a result; the inhabitants of these two districts have a much higher national culture and a more ardent patriotism than the dwellers in the Eastern regions of the Ukraine.

But two years of revolution have rendered possible the re-organisation of public instruction all through the country. Owing to the zealous activity of the Ministry of Public Instruction at Kiev, and of all the "intellectuals," national primary schools have been instituted all over the Ukraine. The organisation of secondary schools is slower. The Ukrainian language, history, and literature, however, are taught everywhere, and already there exists more than a hundred high-schools (gymnasia) that are solely Ukrainian.

In 1905 were created, under the title of "Prosvita," societies for the development of the instruction of the people. But the police persecuted them without cessation, and they were frequently closed. To-day, the Ukraine possesses some hundreds of these societies, often founded by the peasants themselves. In this manner the national instruction of the Ukrainian people has been realised.