UKRAINIAN EMIGRATION AND THE CZECH CULTYRAL SPACE IN 1919–1939

Abstract

The task of scientific research. Description the process of adaptation of Ukrainians, which was caused by a number of personal and group factors. Under personal factors is understood the desire of the emigrant to integrate into a new society, to learn new cultural and social psychological attitudes, under group factors – the national environment: professional/educational societies, religious communities, sometimes cooperation. Мethodology of research. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, comprehensiveness, integrity, systematicity, as well as on the use of methods of analysis and synthesis, historical-genetic, historical-comparative, historically-typological, problem-chronological. The main results of the research carried out within the article. The article illustrates that the adaptation of Ukrainians to the Czech cultural space never took place. In 1919 – 1925 – the «years of fascinating friendship» – it was hindered by personal factors (mentality) and, most importantly, the reluctance of Ukrainians themselves to culturally adapt. First, because of the belief in the rapid decline of the Bolshevik regime and a quick return home, then because of the phenomenon of returning. In 1925 – 1935 – «years of mutual disappointment and cooling» – group factors became important for cultural adaptation. The collapse of the «Russian Relief Action» and the «Great Depression» that dragged on in the CzSR from 1932 to 1935 led to the closure of the Czechoslovak labor market and uncertainty in the social situation. So, Ukrainians were not interested in culture as such. The only exception at that time was the Union of Ukrainian Doctors in interwar Czecho-Slovakia, which was able to integrate into the environment of Czechoslovak eugenicists. And in 1936 – 1939 – «the years of gradual getting used to, development of mutual understanding and rapprochement» – the law of determinism or the sentence of fate, as they aptly put it, stood in the way of the cultural adaptation of Ukrainians: the occupation of the Czechia by Germany, the independence of Slovakia to Zakarpattia Ukraine, the occupation Zakarpatian Ukraine of a by Hungary. Practical significance of research results. The study of the history of Ukrainian emigration in the period between the two world wars within the framework of such a scientific direction as everyday history, which examines the conditions of life, work and rest (living conditions, living conditions, diet, methods of treatment, social adaptation), as well as factors affecting the formation of consciousness and norms of behavior, socio-political preferences, etc. of the vast majority of the population ("average people") of one or another country in one or another historical period.