page_title: University of Lviv
section_title: Ivan Franko University
hierarchical_section_title: University of Lviv / History / Ivan Franko University
caption_attribution_description: Українська: Головний навчальний корпус університету, в якому працювали видатні українські математики Зарицький М., Левицький В., Чайковський М. і вчені україністи Головацький Я., Огоновський О., Возняк М., Сімович В., Ковалик І. (Будинок галицького сейму), Львів, Університетська, 1 This is a photo of a monument in Ukraine, number: 46-101-1748
context_page_description: The University of Lviv, presently the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv is the oldest university in Ukraine, dating from 1661 when the Polish King, John II Casimir, granted it its first royal charter. Over the centuries it underwent transformations, suspensions and name changes that reflected the geo-political complexities of this part of Europe. The present institution can be dated to 1940. It is located in the historic city of Lviv in Lviv Oblast of Western Ukraine.
context_section_description: In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland and the accompanying Soviet invasion, the Soviet administration permitted classes to continue. Until late 1939, the school worked in the pre-war Polish system. On October 18, however, the Polish rector, Professor Roman Longchamps de Bérier, was dismissed, and was replaced by a prominent Ukrainian historian, Mykhailo Marchenko, grandfather of Ukrainian journalist and dissident Valeriy Marchenko. Marchenko was determined to transform Jan Kazimierz University into the Ukrainian Soviet University. On January 8, 1940, the university was renamed Ivan Franko Lviv State University. Polish professors and administrative assistants were increasingly fired and replaced by Ukrainians or Russians, specializing in Marxism, Leninism, political economics, as well as Ukrainian and Soviet literature, history and geography. This was accompanied by the closing of departments seen as related with the religion, free-market economics, capitalism, or the West in general; this included Polish geography, literature, or history. Lectures were held in Ukrainian and Polish (as auxiliary). From 1939 to 1941, the Soviets also executed over a dozen members of the Polish faculty.
  In July 1941 the Nazi German occupiers closed the university, followed by the massacring two dozen Polish professors (as well as members of their households and guests, increasing the total number of victims to more than forty), who included members of other academic institutions, too. The extent to which Ukrainian nationalists may have been involved in identifying and selecting some of the victims is still a matter of debate, as Polish historian Adam Redzik wrote, while the Ukrainian nationalist students helped prepare lists of Polish intellectuals, it is unlikely they expected or knew about their intended purposes (i.e., the executions).
  
  In the summer of 1944, the advancing Red Army, assisted by Polish Home Army forces locally implementing Operation Burza, pushed the Wehrmacht out of Lviv and the university reopened.  At first, its academic staff consisted of Poles, but within the following months most of them, together with the Polish population of the city, were "evacuated", i.e. expelled, as Stalin had moved Poland's borders far to the west. The traditions of Jan Kazimierz University have been preserved at the University of Wrocław, which was established replacing the University of Breslau after the German inhabitants of Breslau/Wrocław had been expelled following Stalin's establishing Germany's eastern border farther to the west.
  The proclamation of the independence of Ukraine in 1991 brought about radical changes in every sphere of university life.  Professor, Doctor Ivan Vakarchuk, a renowned scholar in the field of Theoretical Physics, had been rector of the university since 1990 till 2013. Meeting the requirements arising in recent years new faculties and departments have been set up: the Faculty of International Relations and the Faculty of Philosophy (1992), the Faculty of Pre-Entrance University Preparation (1997), the Chair of Translation Studies and Comparative Linguistics (1998). Since 1997 the following new units have come into existence within the teaching and research framework of the university: the Law College, The Humanities Centre, The Institute of Literature Studies, The Italian Language and Culture Resource Centre. The teaching staff of the university has increased amounting to 981, with scholarly degrees awarded to over two thirds of the entire teaching staff. There are over one hundred laboratories and working units as well as the Computing Centre functioning here. The Zoological, Geological, Mineralogical Museums together with those of Numismatics, Sphragistics and Archeology are stimulating the interests of students.
caption: Ivan Franko University (2014)
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