This week in history 

May 18: International Museum Day.

May 18, 1944: Deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their homeland begins. This is currently observed as Crimean Deportation Victims Day.

May 19, 1861: Ukraine's first Sunday school opens in Sumy.

May 19, 1922: Lenin Young Pioneers Organization is founded in the USSR.

May 20, 1942: The Patriotic War Order, first and second class, is instituted in the Soviet Union.

May 20, 1961: The Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers institutes the annual Taras Shevchenko Prize for outstanding merits in literature and the arts.

May 21, 1712: Peter I orders the Russian capital transferred from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

May 21, 1921: The Ukrainian SSR Council of People's Commissars adopts a resolution to liquidate illiteracy.

May 22, 1856: Tretiakov Art Gallery is founded in Moscow.

May 22, 1939: Italy and Germany sign the Pact of Steel on mutual military assistance strengthening the Berlin-Rome Axis military bloc.

May 23, 1988: A monument to Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky is unveiled in Kyiv.

May 23, 1919: A motion picture studio opens in Odesa.

May 24, 1649: Hetman Khmelnytsky's delegation arrives in Moscow to negotiate concerted action against the Polish Commonwealth.

May 24, 1940: the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America is established in Washington.