This week in history

April 3: 1919. The Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR ratified a decree announcing former estates of Baron Freidrich F. Falz-Fein, Ascaniya Nova and Yelyzavetfeld, a national nature preserve.

1922. A plenum of the RKP(b) Central Committee elected Stalin its General Secretary.

April 4: 1936. The Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Ophthalmology (now the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy) was founded in Odesa.

1996. Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine approved the law On the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea.

April 5: 1992. By a decree of President Leonid Kravchuk the Black Sea Fleet was declared to be Ukrainian.

1995. The first certificate auction took place in Kyiv at the Ukrainian Certificate Auction Center.

April 6: 1896. The first modern Olympics opened in Athens.

1950. The Council of Ministers of the USSR made a secret decision that those exiled between 1941 and 1949, in spite of the term of their exile, should be considered as exiled forever.

April 7: 1989. A Memorial Sign was unveiled in Kyiv to commemorate the heroic deed of Soviet and Polish anti-aircraft gunners in the battle for Kyiv during the World War II.

1993. The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice registered the All-Ukrainian Union of Local Studies.

April 8: 1944. The Crimean offensive operation was started by Soviet troops, due to which the Crimean peninsula was cleared of the Germans.

1990. A charitable non-governmental organization, Ukrainian-American Renaissance Foundation, was founded.

April 9: 1917. The Central All-Ukrainian Union of Cooperatives was founded at the First Congress of the Ukrainian Cooperatives.

1974: The first Soviet supertanker, the Krym, with a tonnage of 182,000 tons was launched in Kerch.