Shevchenko Scientific Society

The Shevchenko Scientific Society, founded in 1873, is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. Unlike the government-funded National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the society is a public organization. It was reestablished in Ukraine in 1989 during the fall of the Soviet Union, after being exiled from Ukraine since 1940. The society now has branches in several countries around the globe, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and France. The organisation is named after the famous Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, Taras Shevchenko. History It was founded in 1873 in Lemberg (today Lviv), at that time the capital of the Austrian crown land of Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, as a literary society devoted to the promotion of Ukrainian language literature initially under the name Shevchenko Society. It was established soon after another cultural society, better known as Prosvita (Enlightenment). At that time any publication in Ukrainian language was prohibited in the Russian-controlled Ukraine (Little Russia), from the beginning it attracted the financial and intellectual support of writers and patrons of Ukrainian background from the Russian Empire. The Shevchenko Scientific Society was created on an idea of a writer Oleksandr Konyskyi and the Shevchenko's contemporary Dmytro Pylchykov with a financial support of Yelyzaveta Myloradovych-Skoropadska.