This week in history

April 8: 1990. The Ukrainian-American Renaissance Foundation, non-governmental charitable organization, was founded.

1994. The National Bank of Ukraine held its first auction of Russian rubles using the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange.

April 9: 1917. The First Congress of the Unions of Cooperatives of Ukraine began, creating the Central All-Ukrainian Union of Cooperatives.

1921. The Anton Chekhov House Museum was opened in Yalta.

April 10: 1944. In the course of the Odesa operation the troops of the Third Ukrainian Front took Odesa.

1996. A system for the wholesale buying and selling of electrical energy was implemented in Ukraine.

April 11: 1987. An address of Crimean Tatars representatives to CPSU Central Committee Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev was made public, insisting on the prompt solution of the problem of the Crimean Tatars repatriation to their historic motherland.

1995. The Council of Directors of the World Bank passed a decision on allotting a $114 million preferential loan for technical reconstruction of Ukraine’s energy system.

April 12: 1961. Soviet astronaut Yury Gagarin was the first man to orbit the world.

1995. At a meeting with representatives of the European Community, European Commission, and G7 countries, President Leonid Kuchma informed about Ukraine’s final decision to close the Chornobyl NPS by 2000.

April 13: 1940. Stage two of the Soviet deportation from Ukrainian SSR’s western oblasts began, involving 320,000 persons.

1995. The first issue of the Visnyk Natsionalnoho Banku Ukrayiny [Ukrainian National Bank Courier] was published in Kyiv.

April 14: 1768. The Koliyivshchyna rebellion of the haidamaky began, headed by Maksym Zalizniak and Ivan Honta.

1936. Polish police broke up a workers’ demonstration in Lviv.