Ukraine at Independence: Bonds of Time
21 August 2017, 16:00
On August 23-24, there will take place wide festivities on the occasion of the State Flag Day and the Independence Day of Ukraine at the Parliament’s premises.
A portal of honour framing the Flag of Ukraine’s Independence will be presented during the action. This flag was brought on August 24, 1991 into the edifice of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine by members of parliament of the first convocation.
Opening of an exhibition under the title “The Pathway of State: the Signs of Regeneration” is also to take place. The exhibit is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the handover of power to Ukraine’s authorities from the State Centre of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile. The museum-launching exposition will present unique documents and artifacts of the Ukrainian history bearing witness to long years of striving keenly to have a free and independent state – the aspirations that have been carried across the generations of Ukrainians for decades. The Ukrainian People’s Republic’s leadership was forced to leave Ukraine in 1920, having yet functioned later on for seventy years in foreign lands. The Council of People’s Ministers did, on November 12, 1920, pass the Law “On Interim Supreme Administration and Legislature in the Ukrainian People’s Republic”, which put then a legal ground for the State Centre of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The Centre spanned all wings of the Ukrainian supreme powers in exile – it had for years been the Ukrainian National Council and The Government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. That centre was headed by a president -- Symon Petliura being the first one, with Mykola Plaviuk as the fifth and the last in the chair. The unceasing line of state creation endeavours was finally bridged over by symbolic handover of the office from the last president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile to the first president of independent Ukraine on August 22, 1992.
That day, it was solemnly proclaimed at the grand meeting in the Palace “Ukraina” that the State Centre of the Ukrainian People’s Republic was to wind up its activities for good.
On the next day there took place a ceremonial devolution of the undernoted authority symbols by the Centre’s delegation to the Ukrainian supreme force at the Mariinsky Palace – the State Flag, the Great Seal, and the President’s Sign of Dignity -- the Ivan Mazepa’s Kleinod.
Besides those unique exhibits, the display will also show an original letter signed by Symon Petliura - the first President-in-exile of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and the abdication act charter by the State Centre of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1917-1921 documentation, archival documents, the then press, snapshots, and sculptures.
A particular emphasis of the show is to be put upon the Soviet-era secret services’ documentation. The brought to light data explicitly mirror the verily killing thoroughness in political and public life surveillance over Ukrainian emigres.
“The Pathway of State: the Signs of Regeneration” exhibition will also be accompanied by a nonfiction film show patch-worked from genuine modern Ukraine’s history newsreels and video-quotes by dignitaries retrospecting back to the 1992 events.
