The Lesia Ukrayinka Museum in occupied Yalta no longer exists

The Lesia Ukrayinka Museum in temporarily occupied Crimea has ceased to exist, according to the news agency Voice of Crimea.

The building where the museum was located still features Soviet-era memorial and security plaques commemorating Lesia Ukrayinka’s stay in Yalta at the end of the 19th century. However, a new plastic plaque now indicates that the “Yalta Historical and Literary Museum” hosts an exhibition titled “Yalta. The 19th Century (History, Music, and Literature)” and an exhibition dedicated to the architect Nikolai Krasnov. Notably, there is scarcely any mention of Lesia Ukrayinka. 

Earlier, during the occupation, a plaque on the building indicated that the second floor housed the “Lesia Ukrayinka Museum” and the “Breaking Stone” exhibition, associated with the poet’s stay in Yalta. 

Currently, the museum offers tours of four rooms: 

1. The entrance room tells the history of the building and partially of Yalta. 
2. The music salon features an exhibition on Yalta’s musical life at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. 
3. The next room presents stories about Yalta’s literary life. 
4. The last room is dedicated to architect Krasnov, with a hall devoted to him. 

“There is no mention of Lesia Ukrayinka—no words, no notices—except for tiny photos in the showcases, mixed with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Tsvetaeva, and a small writing desk where she worked,” Voice of Crimea emphasizes. 

On Google, the Lesia Ukrayinka Museum is marked as “closed.”

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The Lesia Ukrayinka Museum in Yalta was established in the early 1980s by an initiative group led by Yevhen Pronyuk, a former dissident and the head of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed, ahead of the poet’s 100th anniversary. The group’s members included Mykola Okhrimenko, a former student of Lesia Ukrayinka and a Yalta winemaker and scientist, as well as supporters of the poet’s work like Oleksiy Nyrko, teacher, local historian, and former prisoner of Stalin’s camps; Ostap Kindrachuk, Yalta kobzar and local historian; and others. At that time, a monument to Lesia Ukrayinka and a memorial plaque were installed on the building where she lived in 1897.

In 1991, to mark the 120th anniversary of Lesia Ukrayinka’s birth, the museum opened an exhibition titled “Lesia Ukrayinka and Crimea.” Later, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, a new exhibition titled “Breaking Stone” was opened, which was displayed until 2014.

Copy editing: Joy Tataryn