Russia has taken too much from us… Territories, homes, and most frighteningly, people. At a time when we are defending our independence, Russian missiles are increasingly hitting museums, theaters, and libraries – things that preserve the national identity of Ukrainians.

 

But there is something they will never be able to take away… And that is our history, complex, thorny, but ours. But no matter how much the dictator of the aggressor country tries to promote his paranoid narratives about Lenin creating Ukraine, every generation of Ukrainians should know well and confidently tell the world that when our state was being created, there were swamps in the place of Russia. And this is what we have been fighting for for centuries, developing national self-awareness.  

The arguments in our favor are not just words. We have evidence. Pieces of our history are scattered in numerous museums throughout Ukraine. And each of them is a “keeper” of our nation’s code. They are like a kind of cultural DNA that reveals the peculiarities of the national character. However, with the arrival of the occupiers on Ukrainian soil, our “keepers”, who tirelessly worked on the ethnogenesis of the Ukrainian people, also needed help.

 

We all know Taras Shevchenko well. His “Kobzar” is an integral attribute of the cultural heritage of Ukrainians. Do you know who Mykyta Shapoval is? He is a political and public figure, publicist, sociologist and poet, co-author of the Fourth Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada. An impressive figure, isn’t it?

 

The residents of the village of Serebryanka, Donetsk region, where Mykyta Shapoval was born, also thought about this. The residents decided to create a museum in honor of this political figure on the basis of a local school on their own. “It’s not official, so to speak. It’s a volunteer museum. People wanted it and made it. They brought everything there themselves. Although according to the documents there is no museum,” says Yevhen Tkachev, head of the NGO “Proliska” in the Donetsk region.

With the arrival of the occupiers on Ukrainian territory, the village of Serebryanka was constantly bombarded with shelling, which destroyed literally everything. No one thought about the Shapoval museum, and who would bother with some volunteer exhibition when death is literally breathing down your back.

 

“I went to Serebryanka for evacuation. I took people out. I delivered humanitarian aid there. I drove past this museum several times, took pictures of the destroyed school. Then I saw a pedestal of some man. Later, a journalist noticed these photos. She wrote to me that there was a museum there and it was a bust of Shapoval. Then I went to the school, looked and told her that the exhibition was still there. She asked to take it out,” Yevhen Tkachev describes his actions two years ago. The man, without thinking for a long time, decided to take away the valuable, in his opinion, exhibits.

 

The head of the NGO "Proliska" recalls: "It was an ordinary sunny day, I took bread to Serebryanka for the people who were still there and on the way back stopped at the school. By the way, there had been several arrivals there before that. I loaded everything that I thought related to Shapoval: documents, photographs, some paintings. And I took it to the office in Chasiv Yar."

 

This is how a simple, ordinary person saved a piece of the history of the Ukrainian people from the total extermination of the occupiers. And there can be thousands of such stories, you just have to look around and ask yourself: “What can I do to preserve my culture and the history of my people?”

 

“Later, when there was an opportunity, we managed to take out the entire museum exposition. That is, first we relocated what was related to Shapoval, and then, after some time, we returned for other exhibits that described the culture and life of the Ukrainian people of that time.”

 

The head of the NGO “Proliska” in the Donetsk region believes that the museum exposition will help in the education of future generations. “Cultural heritage must be protected not only during wartime. For me, the main thing is that children know history. When I exhibited publications in the Serebryansk group with a pedestal of Shapoval, people aged twenty to forty simply did not know who he was. This generation somehow “fell out” of Ukrainian history. Therefore, the education of young people is important now.”

 

For now, the exhibition of Mykyta Shapoval has been taken to a safe place. Yevhen Tkachev, with the help of the NGO “Proliska”, gave a second wind to the museum, which was doomed to destruction in the fierce battles of a cruel war. Unfortunately, the enemy does not miss the opportunity to destroy Ukrainian history, and missiles are constantly flying towards cultural heritage sites.

 

The story of such a rescue can be an example for everyone. Good undoubtedly returns to the one who creates it. And how can you help Ukraine in such difficult times?

The article was prepared within the framework of the project of the Agency for Private Initiative Development  "Promoting Youth Civic Participation in Decentralized Communities" with co-financing from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).