June 11, 2025 — The Ukrainian Studies Fund (USF) is proud to announce the appointment of two distinguished professionals to its Board of Directors: Kalyna Procyk, founding attorney of Procyk Law Group, and Dr. Adriana Helbig, professor and associate dean at the University of Pittsburgh. Their leadership, expertise, and longstanding commitment to Ukrainian Studies and civic engagement strengthen the USF’s mission to support scholarly initiatives related to Ukraine.

May 5, 2025 – New York, NY — The Ukrainian Studies Fund is honored to announce a $2 million planned gift from Sviatoslav Bozhenko in support of the Ukrainian Studies program at Columbia University. Mr. Bozhenko passed away in San Francisco, CA on April 16, 2025, at the age of 95. This generous bequest reflects Mr. Bozhenko’s love of Ukraine and his strong commitment to education and Ukrainian Studies.

“On behalf of the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, I would like to say how honored we are to have outstanding benefactors such as Sviatoslav Bozhenko, who with foresight and visionary generosity is propelling the Program’s advancement” said Dr. Mark Andryczyk, Ukrainian Studies Program coordinator and Instructor of Ukrainian Literature at Columbia. Dr. Andryczyk further added “Mr. Bozhenko’s life story featured an unwavering love for, and dedication to, Ukraine. He consistently found ways to help the country maintain a presence beyond its borders. Mr. Bozhenko’s donation to our program will ensure that Columbia’s students and faculty will have the opportunity to continue working towards the production of knowledge about Ukraine and underscoring its global significance in the past, present and future.”

Born in 1929 in Kyiv, Mr. Bozhenko was introduced to Soviet repression at an early age (5 months old) when his family was exiled to Turkmenistan as part of Stalin’s repression of Ukrainian intellectuals. By 1934 Mr. Bozhenko’s family was allowed to return to Kyiv, fleeing again during WWII to Germany. The Bozhenko family ultimately settled in California after stopovers in Brazil and Chicago, where Mr. Bozhenko completed his degree at the University of Chicago. One of Mr. Bozhenko’s prized possessions was his Master’s diploma from the University of California signed by then-governor, Ronald Reagan. Mr. Bozhenko spent almost 25 years as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco. Fluent in five languages, Mr. Bozhenko was a long-time supporter of international students. Upon retiring, the deceased took up painting, developing a style he called “Grandma Moses meets Van Gogh”. Mr. Bozhenko’s gift is the result of the Ukrainian Studies Fund’s efforts to facilitate a planned gift in line with the donor’s values. He was a long-time donor to the Ukrainian Studies Fund, and reached out to the organization to help with his estate planning.

This contribution exemplifies the profound impact that planned giving can have on the development of Ukrainian Studies. By including Columbia in his estate plans, Mr. Bozhenko has joined a distinguished group of benefactors whose foresight and philanthropy continue to shape the future of Ukrainian Studies in the United States.

For more information on planned giving opportunities in support of Ukrainian Studies, please email info@ukrainianstudiesfund.org

On September 24, 2024, Olena Zelenska, First Lady of Ukraine, visited Harvard University at the invitation of the Dean’s Office of the John F. Kennedy School’s Institutes of Politics and International Affairs. The event was announced as a conversation with Ms. Olena Zelenska on the role of Ukrainian studies in the struggle for independence. The event was attended by the director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Prof. Serhii Plokhy, as well as a member of the board of the Ukrainian Studies Fund, Ms. Dora Chomiak. In addition to conversations with Harvard students, the First Lady met with teachers and representatives of the Ukrainian community who are interested in supporting the further development of university programs in Ukrainian studies. This is another example of the leading role played by the Ukrainian Studies Program at Harvard University, conceived by the founder of the Ukrainian Studies Fund, Mr. Stephan Chemych in 1957. Thanks to the generous support of the Ukrainian community and the dedicated work of the Ukrainian Studies Fund’s enthusiasts, the Harvard program has become a beacon for the further development of Ukrainian studies in the American, Canadian and British realms of higher education.

Despite wartime conditions, in July-August 2024, limited archaeological research was undertaken in the city of Baturyn, Chernihiv region. This research project was funded by the Baturyn CIUS Project Fund in Toronto with the support of the USF. The Baturyn complex continues its museum-, excursion-, educational-, research-, and publishing-related activities. Despite the war, cultural and historical research activities of the capital of the Cossack state continue.  Only employees of the Archeology Department of the local National Historical and Cultural Reserve “Hetman’s Capital” and volunteers from Chernihiv took part in the excavations of Baturyn.

From 3 to14 June, 2024, a workshop titled “2024 Translating Ukraine Summer Research Institute” was held in Wroclaw. The event was attended by 30 participants from Europe, Canada and the USA, including experienced professional translators, as well as beginners who translate texts from Ukrainian into English. The idea for such a workshop arose from the need for more translations of Ukrainian-language materials in the English-speaking world. The classes were led  by Dr. Marko Andryczyk, a lecturer in Ukrainian literature at Columbia University, together with author and poet Oksana Lutsyshyna (laureate of the State Shevchenko Prize, lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin) and American translator Dominic Hoffman. Representatives of publishing programs at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute  and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the University of Alberta  took part in the organization of the events. The workshop was financially supported by a number of academic institutions and Ukrainian public organizations.

On April 9, 2024, Nobel Laureate Oleksandra Matviychuk spoke at the World Leaders Forum at Columbia University. Ms. Matviychuk delivered her speech in the elegant hall of the university’s main building, where in 2004, the Ukrainian Studies Fund, for the first time, organized a fundraising banquet in support of the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University. During her presentation, Ms. Matviychuk answered questions posed by professors and students, primarily about the crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine, her work in gathering evidence and testimonies for future trials in international courts, the need to counter the spread of Russian disinformation, and the necessity to protect human rights in society. 

The year 2024 marked the 80th anniversary of the tragic events in Sahryn in the Kholm region, when on March 10, 1944, units of the Polish Home Army and Polish Peasant Battalions attacked the Ukrainian villages of the Hrubeshiv region with the aim of annihilating the Ukrainian population. In Sahryn, 612 Ukrainians were killed in one day, including 385 women and children. The events in Sahryn had been ignored for the longest time in the history of World War II, although it is the largest war crime committed by the Polish armed forces during the war. Those historical events which form the perception of the past for Poland’s Ukrainian population, put the “Aktsia Visla” camp in Jaworzno at the top of the list. Second on the list are the crimes in the Nadsyannia region and the forced resettlement to the USSR in 1944-46. Meanwhile, the tragedy of the Kholm region, the Kholm villages and the Kholm martyrology did not fit into the historical memory of the community for many years. The academic research project “Victims of the Polish-Ukrainian Confrontation of 1939-1947”, launched in 2020 with the assistance of the Ukrainian Studies Fund’s donors, should fill just such a blank spot in the history of Ukraine during the Second World War. Dr. Ihor Halahida, a professor in the Department of History at the University of Gdańsk, serves as the head of the project, and the Warsaw-based weekly newspaper “Nashe Slovo” (Our Word), published an interview featuring Dr. Halahida and highlighted the relevance of this research project.

On November 7-9, 2023, photos taken by American photographer Patrick Patterson were exhibited in the central rotunda hall of one of the buildings of the U.S. Capitol. Patterson, who spent a year in Ukraine, documented on camera the consequences of Russian war crimes. During the exhibition at the Capitol, Patterson showed senators and congressmen photos from the de-occupied Kharkiv region, in particular, and described the plight of Ukrainians, whose lives were destroyed by the war.  The exhibition was sponsored by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, while the Ukrainian Studies Fund provided technical support in preparing the photographs for display.