The Shevchenko Scientific Society is an organization of learned men and women dedicated to scholarship. It is the oldest Ukrainian academy of arts and sciences whose activities have been the mainstay of Ukrainian cultural life for over a century. Founded in 1873 in the city of Lviv, Ukraine, the Society was liquidated by the Soviet regime in 1939; however, it was reestablished in 1947 in Western Europe and in the United States, and in 1989 in Ukraine. The headquarters of the Society in the US is located in New York City; besides offices and lecture halls, it contains a specialized library, a depository of archives pertaining to Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora, and an art collection. The Society has chapters in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, PA, Chicago, IL, Detroit, MI, and Cleveland, OH. National Shevchenko Scientific Societies exist also in Australia, Canada, Poland, Slovakia, and one headquartered in Sarcelles, France, for members in Western Europe. The work of all Shevchenko Scientific Societies is coordinated by a quadrennially elected World Council with offices in Lviv, New York, and Toronto. Its membership, past and present, includes many distinguished foreign scholars, among them the physicists Albert Einstein and Max Planck, and the French scholar André Mazon. Starting in 1892, the Society has published over 230 volumes of The Memoirs of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (each volume contains articles on a particular topic or discipline), a considerable number of scholarly works in various languages, e.g., three multi-volume encyclopedias of Ukraine, and is now publishing an Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Diaspora. The Society has also published over 120 scholarly volumes (some jointly with other scholarly presses), among them Ukraine and Ukrainians in the World (1994), Towards An Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology of Ukrainian Thought from 1710 to 1995 (1995, in Ukrainian), and a 2-vol. Ukrainian-Czech Dictionary (1994-96 ). Members receive a 20% discount on books published by the Society. In the United States, the Society organizes and sponsors scholarly conferences, colloquia, symposia, and weekly public lectures. It is an affiliate member of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), and a consortium of the greater New York scholarly institutions involved with Ukrainian Studies. The Society participates in national and international scholarly conferences and congresses on Ukrainian and/or Slavic Studies. It also provides research grants for scholars and stipends for qualified students. While the main function of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States lies in the areas of scholarship and education, at its headquarters in New York, it also provides for the general public: information for students on institutions of higher learning; facilities for neighborhood educational programs, and poetry readings. The Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA, is exempt from Federal Income Tax under the provision of section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Receipts for tax purposes are provided for all donations to the Society.
