CULTURAL EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AS A FACTOR OF FORMING THE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE POLITICAL LEGAL CONTEXT ON THE TERRITORY OF VOLYN’ DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD

Abstract

Peculiarities of the formation and activity of the Ukrainian cultural educational organizations that were functioning on the territory of Volyn during the interwar period of the 20th century have been analyzed in the political legal context; social political conditions of their cultural work have been characterized; a circle of the most active participants of the organizations have been defined; the impact of these organizations on the social cultural processes in the region has been revealed. A historical legal aspect and the activity of the cultural educational organizations have been found out. In the article, on the basis of the archives documents we wanted to investigate: forms and methods of the activity of the cultural educational communities; national policy of the Polish government towards Volyn, especially in the fields of education and culture; foundation, programs and structure of the cultural educational organizations and communities. The author believes that during the interwar period of the 20th century mass scale educational work of the Ukrainian public organizations achieved a high level. Considering a social importance and results a leading role belongs to “Prosvita”. It has been pointed out that it was thanks to this organization that by mid 1920s a system of cultural educational events was formed. Those events favoured and enhanced public, national patriotic, and aesthetic education of the Ukrainian population of Volyn. The chronological frames of the research have been defined – 1921–1939s, the interwar period when Western Ukraine was a part of the Polish state. That was the time when, on the one hand, the policy of the national discrimination of the Ukrainians and their Polonization began. On the other hand, the Ukrainian national liberation movement was intensifying, and the role of the cultural educational organizations and communities in the preservation and development of the national self-consciousness and culture of the Volyn dwellers was becoming stronger in the political legal context.