The Zina Genyk-Berezovska Collection was brought to the T.H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature in Kyiv from Prague in stages beginning in 1993, two years after her death. In 2003, the remainder of the private archive of Zina and Kost Berezovskykh were transferred to the T.H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature’s archives. This installment was by far the most sizable, including documents, photos, academic works and articles, medical records and other materials belonging to the couple, as well as documents from Ukrainian cultural figures that had lived and worked in Prague following the anti-Bolshevik migration of the 1920s. These mini collections were transferred to the Institute of Literature along with Genyk-Berezovska’s own papers, providing an invaluable perspective on this community of Ukrainian exiles in Prague.
From this earlier period, Genyk-Berezovska has materials belonging to Mykhailo Brynsky, a Ukrainian sculptor who also travelled to and from Soviet Ukraine, such as his passport dated from 1919. There are also documents about his trip to Kharkiv in 1931 to take part in an international competition to sculpt a statue of Ukraine’s poet laureate Taras Shevchenko. Brynsky was a member of the Ukrainian Galician Army, which was the military of the West Ukrainian National (or People’s) Republic, which emerged in the wake of the collapse of the Central Powers during World War I. Genyk-Berezovska’s collection thus includes photos of Brynsky with notable figures like Simon Petliura and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a statesman who served as the first prime minister of Ukraine, following the February Revolution in 1917.
Her papers also include materials belonging to noted Ukrainian physicist Ivan Horbachevskyi, who was born in the village of Zarubnytsi near Ternopil in 1854 and went to study medicine in Prague. A prominent figure in the fields of organic chemistry, biochemistry, and public health, Horbachevskyi served as the first Ukrainian Minister of Health in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He also remained deeply rooted in his community, helping to found the Ukrainian Free University in Prague, among many other notable achievement. Genyk-Berezovska’s collection has within in letters to Horbachevskyi, postcards and other correspondence sent to his family, photos of organizational committee meetings in Prague, and even a photo album of the Ukrainian Sich Rifleman which was gifted to the Horbachevskyi family in 1915.
This installment included the personal papers of Genyk-Berezovska and her husband, such as autobiographical materials, medical records, photographs, as well as materials they generated while working at the Charles University in Prague, such as drafts of articles and manuscripts, their dissertations, translations as other educational materials. In addition to the 800 letters sent to Genyk-Berezovska (donated to the T.H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature in 1995), her papers include texts written by Ukrainian sixtiers, some of which were smuggled out and then translated into Czech by Genyk-Berezovska herself. These materials also include information about the activization of the Ukrainian community in Prague in the 1980s, as well as small mini-collections or personal papers of well-known figures in this community from the previous generation, such as the chemist, doctor and statesman Ivan Horbachevsky, Oksana Kosach-Shymanska, who was the sister of renowned writer Lesya Ukrainka, and others.
