Resources for Researchers

 Three years ago today, Tetiana Kalenychenko gave me these wonderful warm socks. She had come to Edmonton for a conference I had organized and that we promptly had to cancel once everyone arrived, due to the declaration of the global pandemic. Tania was the last of our guests to leave and I took her around downtown, which was eerily like a ghost town, and she came over for supper with our family. Poor Tania would then have an epic journey home, trapped first in Frankfurt and then in Minsk, and finally making it to Kyiv days later.

These are my Covid socks and my war socks. Tania had been

Welcome to New Blog “Reflections”

Dear H-Ukraine community,

We are happy to share with you the exciting news about our new initiative - "Reflections." This new blog is aimed to create an inviting environment to publish your stories and personal reflections about Ukraine, your experiences as a scholar in/of Ukraine, and thoughts about the field of studies. We envision this blog as an informal place to express personal emotions and articulate ideas, which you have in mind, but have not been sure where to publish them. Today we are posting a very thoughtful and emotional first story. Please give it

Post-Soviet Dichotomy: A 'Western' Researcher's Experiences in the Security Service (SBU) in Chernihiv and the State Archives of the Chernihiv Oblast (DACHO)

By Gregory Aimaro-Parmut, Indiana University  

Five years ago, a law came into effect which declassified materials held in the Ukrainian Security Service Archives. The archives have since opened to the public and scholars alike. For scholars of the Soviet era, this changed the game; never before has such material been so readily available. In particular, those studying topics like the 1932-33 famine, Stalin’s Great Terror, and the Second

Off the Record: How Anthropologists can Learn from the Silences in Ukraine and Poland

by Julia Buyskykh, Ph.D., The Centre for Applied Anthropology; Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Kyiv, Ukraine; Fulbright Scholar, Pennsylvania State University

I am an anthropologist who studies religious dynamics and memory. From 2015-2018, I conducted intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands (Lublin and Subcarpathia provinces). Throughout this period, I spent four months in the region, returned habitually, and maintained communication with a number of my interlocutors via e

Access and Digitization on Trial: Alex Krakovsky's Archival Battle in Ukraine   

By Greg Stricharchuk (gstricharchuk@gmail.com), Fulbright Scholar, Ukraine

Last January, after some prompting by archivists in Poland, I visited the central archives in L’viv searching for documents about my grandmother. Without consulting the files, an official at the archive told me there were not any records that would help me. Disappointed, I told the colleague who had accompanied me that I was interested in learning more about Ukraine’s archives. Shortly after returning to the United States,  my colleague

An Introduction to the Department of Manuscripts at Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library

by Danylo Kravets, Scientific Fellow, Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library

The Department of Manuscripts is housed in the main building of the Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine. The address is Stefanyka St. 2, Lviv, 79000. The main reading room of the department is located on the first floor of the library and is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (except the last working day of a month, when the library is closed). You may contact the

An Introduction to the Department of Manuscripts at Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library

by Danylo Kravets, Scientific Fellow, Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library

The Department of Manuscripts is housed in the main building of the Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine. The address is Stefanyka St. 2, Lviv, 79000. The main reading room of the department is located on the first floor of the library and is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (except the last working day of a month, when the library is closed). You may contact the

Welcome to H-Ukraine’s New Blog “Khroniky”

by Amber N. Nickell and John Vsetecka, H-Ukraine Editors

We came of academic age on stories of bribing reading room attendants with vodka and cigarettes, smuggling photocopies of documents across borders, and archival directors that stood as “Soviet-style” gatekeepers of the past. Yet, the archives that exist in the memories of our colleagues who conducted fieldwork during the Cold War era are not the same archives that many of us work in today. In many oblasts, the reading rooms are more open than they have ever been. Researchers receive stacks of NKVD

Welcome to H-Ukraine’s New Blog “Khroniky”

Amber N. Nickell and John Vsetecka, H-Ukraine Editors

We came of academic age on stories of bribing reading room attendants with vodka and cigarettes, smuggling photocopies of documents across borders, and archival directors that stood as “Soviet-style” gatekeepers of the past. Yet, the archives that exist in the memories of our colleagues who conducted fieldwork during the Cold War era are not the same archives that many of us work in today. In many oblasts, the reading rooms are more open than they have ever been. Researchers receive stacks of NKVD