09/19/2026
🇺🇦35 years since the revival of
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
On September 19, 1991, an official order was signed to revive Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on its historic grounds as an independent Ukrainian institution of higher education - Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University.
This year marks the 35th anniversary of that decision.
Behind the revival was an ambitious and courageous vision, driven above all by Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, who turned away from a political career to devote himself to rebuilding the Academy as Ukraine's first non-Soviet university.
For the early 1990s, many of the changes introduced at Kyiv Mohyla were groundbreaking.
The university was among the first in Ukraine to introduce admissions based on testing, establish mechanisms designed to prevent traditional bribery in admissions, and adopt Ukrainian and English as languages of instruction.
And there is a great story about how the university got its first space in Podil: Bryukhovetsky reportedly won it in a blitz chess game against the head of a naval academy.
To mark the 35th anniversary, Ukrainian media Babel published a long-form biographical profile of Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, Honorary President of NaUKMA and the driving force behind the Academy's revival.
Photo from Factum est factum. Kyiv: Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy Publishing House, 2010.