The Ukrainian Museum-Archives (UMA) was founded in 1952 by Leonid Bachynsky, one of thousands of war refugees to immigrate to Cleveland in the early 1950s. Much of the original material of the archive consisted of Bachynsky’s personal papers, which traversed Europe, displaced persons camps in Germany before crossing the Atlantic Ocean and landing in the wood-frame Victorian-era house located in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood, which is now the UMA. Some of the materials tapped into a network of displaced scholars and diplomats on four continents, representing the Ukrainian National (or People’s) Republic, its government-in-exile and ephemeral diplomatic missions. His brother Evhen Batchinsky, consul to Switzerland in Lausanne under the UNR government in 1918, sent many boxes of additional material to Cleveland from Switzerland during the 1950s-1970s. Most, but not all, of those documents were acquired by Carleton University in 1982, where they comprise one-third of Evhen Batchinsky’s reunited collection.
Although Leonid Bachynsky is referred to as the founder of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives, the story is more complicated. Materials transported from Ukraine during the Russian Civil War and WWII found their way into the collection through displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany. These materials were shipped to America and Canada along with the migration of Ukrainian refugees to North America. Thus, the years immediately prior to Ukrainian emigration to the US in 1949 and 1950 are in fact crucial when discussing the provenance of these materials. In fact, documents collected by Evhen Batchinsky and Leonid Bachynsky are a unique window into that postwar world, when thousands of Ukrainians created community in DP camps in Germany, where they organized, published journals, created educational materials, restored cultural and social organizations. The archival materials produced and collected by these displaced and dispossessed people is vast and the documents that remain at the UMA are now in the process of being digitized and incorporated into the holdings of the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial, as unique historical artifacts. In terms of the historiography of this period, these materials should fill multiple lacunae in the literature regarding not just the Ukrainian refugee experience, but also factors shaping this liminal and yet robust world of one of Europe’s stateless generations.
As an émigré in the British zone, Leonid Bachynsky petitioned for and ultimately organized what Luba Gawur refers to as “a core collection,” which according to a document she found in the UMA’s archives “originated under the auspices of the Ukrainian Central Aid Committee (UCAC) in the British zone of Germany, and later came under the general administration of the Central Museum-Archive of UVAN (Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences) in Augsburg, then in New York.” The UMA’s connection to UVAN, the Ukrainian academy in exile, was obscured over time, but helps explain, in part, how such valuable materials (particularly the papers and correspondence of diplomats and representatives of the UNR government-in-exile) ended up in Cleveland, OH.
The story of UVAN is complex, but essentially various branches were created in major metropolitan areas with the aim of incorporating eventually all the documentation that was salvaged into “a rehabilitated, re-unified archive of the free Ukrainian state.” In the chaotic conditions of postwar Europe, the implementation was less than perfect. As Gawur gleaned from interviews and papers retained at the UMA, six UVAN sections were created—UVAN-Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk and the Vatican. Part of the archive designated for the UVAN-Kharkiv archive were sent to Canada in 1950 and the rest was acquired by Leonid Bachynsky. Most of UVAN-Kharkiv archive ended up eventually in Winnipeg and at the National Archives in Canada in Ottawa. However, as no inventory existed, the fate of all the materials is unknown and some records appear to have disappeared. In the 1950s, the UVAN in New York recognized the UMA as an affiliated repository, but “references to the latter as a UVAN-Kharkiv destination are difficult to find,” according to Gawur. Part of the problem lies in the fact that, as Bachynsky wrote in a document from 1954, “under the unified name of the museum, there are actually two museums: one, which collects the designated samples for the Kharkiv museum and is under the direction of UVAN, and the second community museum, which consists of donations of local citizens.” Some materials from this crucial early period remain in the collection in Cleveland, including boxes of letters sent through the Prisoner of War Post, documents of the Ukrainian Red Cross, and personal papers of figures like Osyp Maidaniuk, who was a diplomatic courier who worked for the United States Embassy in Sweden and had a direct connection to Leonid Bachynsky through his brother Evhen.
Initially, the bulk of the UMA’s collection was housed in a defunct coal bin at the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Parma, before being transferred to the Plast House, a building owned by the scouting organization on Kenilworth Avenue in Cleveland. Bachynsky had been actively involved in Plast in Ukraine and the DP camps and this continued his involvement in emigration. The Plast House was thus a natural home for his archival collection. For many years, it was stored unprocessed in the attic and basement of the building. Then in 1959 the community registered the Ukrainian Museum Archives as a non-profit entity, which was given tax exempt status in 1966, the same year the institution inaugurated membership dues, which in addition to large government grants and donations have sustained the institution for many years. In 1977, Leonid Bachynsky retired as director and the UMA purchased the building officially from Plast, taking over the maintenance and upkeep of the facility, though it was not until the 1980s that facility took steps to become the museum-archive we know today.
Most of the documents tied to Evhen Batchinsky were transferred to Carleton University in 1982 from the UMA, when the fate of the museum was unclear. At that time, the original founders were passing away, while the neighborhood of Tremont was in decline. The UMA’s collection was held in a wooden frame house at a time when the major industry in Tremont was arson and insurance fraud. By then, most of the Ukrainian community had moved to the suburbs of Cleveland, which meant there were few people to look after the museum’s holdings. One might argue that the live-in caretaker, Iwan Shuljak, played a crucial role in preserving the UMA’s collection by his very presence and the maintenance work he was doing—clearing snow, mowing the lawns, sweeping the leaves, and even reading the paper on the front porch.
In addition to the preservation of what remained of the early collections, Bachynsky and his successors—Stepan Kikhta, Oleksandr Fedynsky, and Andrew Fedynsky—continued collecting books, periodicals, documents, photos, artifacts, memoirs, and other materials from the surrounding community. This documentation comprises the bulk of the DP camps archives, which are being digitized by the USHMM and shared generously with many institutions in Ukraine. The vast majority of the UMA’s holdings remain uncatalogued, though through its summer internship program the institution has made significant headway.
In 1987, a younger generation of Ukrainian-Americans in Cleveland assumed stewardship over the collection, making a number of strategic decisions that helped keep the museum in Tremont to contribute to Cleveland’s hoped-for revival. The new volunteers installed exhibits, like the Oral History Project directed by Marta Mudri, which documented through interviews, photographs, memoirs, and other documents the personal histories of members of the community. They also regularly stage events that spotlight the institution’s hidden collections. The museum has also undertaken several stages of capital and organizational improvements, including the construction of an archival building, the hiring of a permanent curator Aniza Kraus, the acquisition of neighboring property, and plans to construct a conservation facility for professional processing of future donations.
