This week in history

January 16: 1918. The UNR Small Rada passed a law on forming a Ukrainian volunteer army.

1991. Pope John Paul II renewed Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic church hierarchies in Ukraine.

January 17: 1921. The Ukrainian Free University was opened in Vienna, only to be transferred to Prague in the fall.

1945. Soviet troops, together with the First Polish Army, took Warsaw.

January 18: 1654. The Pereyaslav Cossack Rada decided to take the oath of allegiance to the Muscovite Tsar.

1944. Volyn saw the first serious engagement between the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and NKVD troops.

January 19: 1906. The weekly Shershen (Hornet), Ukraine’s first revolutionary-oriented satirical magazine, began to publication in Kyiv.

1992. On the initiative of the Ukrainian Republican Party and Rukh, Kyiv saw a ceremonial military oath-taking by reserve officers who were citizens of Ukraine.

January 20: 1918. The Bolshevik People’s Secretariat decreed to form the Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, which was actually the Russian Red Army.

1943. The fist issue of the newspaper Ukrayinske slovo was published in Winnipeg, Canada.

January 21: 1934. The XII Congress of KP(b)U resolved to move the Ukrainian SSR capital from Kharkiv to Kyiv.

1990. A human chain, The Ukrainian Wave, was formed from Kyiv to Lviv in honor of the Day of Ukrainian Union.

January 22: 1918. The Fourth Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada declared the Ukrainian People’s Republic sovereign and independent.

1919.The Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic proclaimed on Kyiv’s St. Sophia Square the unification of the UNR and ZUNR (the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic) into a united Ukraine; it is now it is Day of Ukrainian Unity.

1992. The first Congress of Ukrainians was opened in Kyiv.