SHEVCHENKIV ANNIVERSARIES AND UKRAINIAN PUBLIC CENTERS AND ORGANIZATIONS IN ODESA IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE 19TH – BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Authors: Svitlenko Serhii 
Published: February 2024

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the history of commemoration of Shevchenko's anniversary in the context of the activities of Ukrainian public centers and organizations in Odesa in the last quarter of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Research methods have become personalistic and systemic.
Sources: archival and published documents, as well as epistolaries, journalism, memoirs gleaned from Ukrainian periodicals.
The main results consist in understanding the process of commemorating Shevchenko's anniversary as an important factor in the formation of Ukrainian national consciousness and identity among the population of Odesa – an important socio-economic and socio-political center of southern Ukrainian lands. It is shown that the preservation of the historical memory of the great Ukrainian poet and thinker T. G. Shevchenko had a long history in Odessa from the last quarter of the 19th century before the First World War. Commemoration of the Shevchenkiv anniversaries can be traced in the activities of various Ukrainian public centers and organizations, in particular the Odesa Ukrainian Community, the Odesa «Prosvita», the Odesa «Ukrainian Club» and the «Ukrainian House». The main forms of holding Shevchenko's commemorations were literary, musical and vocal evenings of memory; reading reports, lectures, abstracts about Kobzar; publications about T. G. Shevchenko in newspapers, magazines, brochures, bibliographic indexes, etc.; organization of appropriate memorial services. In the 1870s and 1880s, measures to perpetuate the memory of T. G. Shevchenko were held illegally, and from the end of the 19th century gained publicity and relative mass. A notable role in the organization and implementation of events to perpetuate the memory of the Ukrainian poet and thinker belonged to such figures as L. A. Smolenskyi, O. O. Andrievskyi, P. O. Zeleny, M. F. Komarov, I. M. Lutsenko, D. D. Sygarevich, A. V. Nikovskyi, S. P. Shelukhin, and others.
The commemoration of Shevchenko's anniversary faced internal difficulties of an organizational and ideological nature that arose in the Ukrainian ethno-national community of a polyethnic and multicultural city. Shevchenko's measures, first of the Odesa Ukrainian community, and later of the Odesa «Prosvita» and its successors, were in the field of view of the local administration, gendarmes and police, who exerted undisguised pressure and repression on conscious Ukrainianism and its public centers and organizations, sought to block the process of spreading Ukrainian national consciousness and identity in the city. However, the punitive and protective measures of the Russian imperial regime could not stop the activity of conscious Ukrainianism in Odessa to perpetuate the historical memory of T. G. Shevchenko, which was of great importance for the revival and preservation of the historical heritage of Kobzar, the spread of Ukrainian national and cultural values in the Russified and at the same time multifaceted in ethno-cultural, ethno-national and social dimensions of the region.
Concise conclusions. It has been proven that from the end of the 1870s to 1914, Ukrainian public centers and organizations accumulated important historical experience in commemorating Shevchenko's anniversaries. This activity contributed to the national consolidation of local conscious Ukrainianism, the formation of the modern Ukrainian ethno-cultural landscape.