The Russian massive attack on Kyiv on the night of May 24 caused serious damage to a number of scientific institutions of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The building at 4 Hrushevsky Street suffered the most – a historic academic building housing several humanitarian institutes of the NAS of Ukraine.
As a result of the strike, the Institute of History of Ukraine, the A.Yu. Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies, the T.G. Shevchenko Institute of Literature, the M.T. Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology, the O.O. Potebnya Institute of Linguistics, and the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the NAS of Ukraine were damaged.
This is a place where humanitarian memory of Ukraine has been formed and preserved for decades. Scientists working here study Ukrainian history, language, literature, folklore, culture, and Ukraine’s civilizational ties with the world. Unique archives, manuscript collections, libraries, and funds that are part of Ukraine’s national memory are concentrated within these walls.
Among the most valuable are the manuscript collections of the T.G. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine, which include over 100,000 storage units – from manuscripts of the 14th-16th centuries to autographs of Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Marko Vovchok, and many other prominent figures of Ukrainian culture.
The Manuscript Center of the Institute preserves materials that formed the basis of academic, scientific-critical, and encyclopedic editions of Ukrainian literary heritage.
The archival collections of the M.T. Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine – one of the main centers for preserving Ukrainian intangible cultural heritage – are also of immense value. Unique field recordings, phonographic recordings of folk music, ethnographic materials, archives of expeditions from the 1920s-1930s, and personal collections of figures in science and culture are stored here. The scientific archival collections of the Institute include about 1.5 million sheets of documents and dozens of unique collections.
Libraries, book storages, archival premises, working offices, and scientific infrastructure of the institutions were damaged.
The attack also damaged the H.S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the NAS of Ukraine – one of the key centers of humanitarian thought in Ukraine, where world-renowned schools of philosophy, logic, ethics, and religious studies were formed. The M.S. Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archaeography and Source Studies of the NAS of Ukraine – one of the leading institutions engaged in preserving and studying Ukraine’s documentary heritage, archival monuments, and sources of Ukrainian history from various eras – was also damaged.
Despite the destruction, the teams of the scientific institutions are already working on eliminating the consequences of the strikes and saving the collections, archives, and scientific materials.
Photo: Facebook - pages of NAS of Ukraine institutions
