This week in history

December 14: 1918. Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky abdicated in favor of the Directory.

1939. The Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for aggression against Finland.

December 15: 1896. The first Ukrainian documentary films were released.

1970. Soviet Venus-7 spaceship became the world’s first spacecraft to land on another planet.

December 16: 1917. The Council of People’s Commissars adopted its Manifesto to the Ukrainian People and Ultimatum to the Ukrainian Rada, failure to comply with which in 48 hours would lead Russia to declare a war on Ukraine.

1922. The All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee resolved to establish the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR.

December 17: 1702. Tsar Peter I ordered the first Russian newspaper published.

1991. The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice registered George Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation.

December 18: 1833. The imperial Russian anthem, “God Save the Tsar,” was played for the first time in public at the Bolshoi Theater on Emperor Nicholas I’s birthday.

1942. The Soviet re-conquest of Ukraine from the Nazi Germans began with the capture of the village of Pivnivka.

December 19: 1959. The Yaroslav Halan Memorial Museum was opened in Lviv.

1990. The Ukrainian Organization of Soldiers’ Mothers was registered.