1919 Ukraine émigré Independence

Hruševs’kyj, Mychajlo. Ukrajina a Rusko [Ukraine and Russia]. In: Poznejme Ukrajinu. Sbírka informačních a časových pojednání o ukrajinské otázce [Let Us Know Ukraine. A Collection of Informational and Topical Essays on the Ukrainian Question]. Česká série, číslo 10–11. Kyjiv–Praha: Nákladem ukrajinského vydavatelského družstva „Čas“, 1919. 43, [2] pp. 18 × 14 cm. Original printed wrappers. A very good copy: wrappers lightly toned with minor edge wear; stamp of Matica slovenská (the leading Slovak cultural society, founded 1863) to front wrapper, reading “Vyřadené z fondov Matice Slovenskej” [Removed from the collections of Matica slovenská]. Clean and well-preserved internally. Rare Czech-language edition of an important essay by the eminent Ukrainian historian and statesman Mykhailo Hruševs’kyj (1866–1934), leading architect of modern Ukrainian national historiography and first president of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic. This publication formed part of the series Poznejme Ukrajinu (Let Us Know Ukraine), a collection of informational and polemical writings intended to introduce Czechs and Slovaks to Ukrainian history, culture, and the pressing “Ukrainian Question” in the aftermath of World War I. The series was issued by the Ukrainian publishing cooperative Čas, founded in Kyiv and relocated to Prague, which became one of the most active centers of Ukrainian émigré intellectual life after 1919. Its mission was to inform European public opinion and garner support for Ukrainian independence at a time when the new Czechoslovak Republic itself was emerging on the map of Europe. Publications of Čas were printed in very limited runs under precarious political and financial conditions, and complete sets of Poznejme Ukrajinu are virtually unobtainable. Individual volumes, especially those by Hruševs’kyj, are scarce in commerce. OCLC records only a handful of institutional holdings worldwide. From the library of Matica slovenská, the Slovak national cultural and scholarly society, later deaccessioned. Inv. BX1