This week in history

March 6 1939: A monument to the Great Kobzar is unveiled in Kyiv in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth.

March 7 1921: The Council of People’s Commissars (Radnarkom) of the Ukrainian SSR adopts a decree on the formation of rabfak (workers’ schools).

March 8 1922: The All-Ukraine Central Executive Committee adopts a decree on the confiscation of church valuables and their transfer to the Famine Relief Fund.

1946: The Synod of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church convenes in Lviv, initiated and organized by the People’s Commissariat of State Security of Ukraine (NKDB) and the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR (NKVD).

March 9 1930: A trial of a group of Ukrainian intellectuals begins in Kyiv. The defendants are charged with allegedly organizing an underground counterrevolutionary organization called the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU).

1930: The first issue of the weekly newspaper Nasha zemlia (Our Land), the legitimate organ of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, comes off the presses in Lviv.

March 10: 1992: Ukraine is admitted to the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in Brussels.

1995: The National Bank of Ukraine holds the first sealed-bid auction to sell domestic government bonds for 1995.

March 11 1921: The Radnarkom of the Ukrainian SSR adopts a decree on the purchase of privately-owned cultural valuables for state museums.

1997: The presidents of Ukraine and Moldova sign a declaration on the formation of a customs union in Chisinau.

March 12 1923: The Radnarkom of the Ukrainian SSR forwards a protest note to the governments of Great Britain, Italy, and France in connection with the annexation of Eastern Galicia (Halychyna) by the Second Rzeczpospolita.

1945: The newly-formed Ukrainian National Committee of Berlin tries to organize a national army based on the remnants of the SS Galicia Division.