Library of Ukrainian Literature and Culture “Lesea Ukrainka” – branch of the Municipal Library “B.P.Hașdeu” was opened on February 16, 1991, as a result of the project to create a center of Ukrainian language, culture and traditions. The specificity of the library consists in the following fact: it is the only library, which meets the demand of the population for literature in Russian, Romanian and Ukrainian languages.

We are happy to welcome all those, regardless of age, address and nationality.

Informative note:

From the very first days of its activity the library became the place, where:

• the children’s Sunday school lessons were held, which through books introduced little Ukrainians to their mother tongue;
  meetings of Ukrainian intercultural societies were organized;
  religious services;
  the first Ukrainian language and literature olympiads were held.
  In time the library began to be the place of inspiration and knowledge for the whole family. The need arose to open a children’s section, and in 1998 this was possible.

The capital repair, made in 2003 from the municipal budget, cardinally changed  library. The traditional look of Soviet times has been transformed into a 2-story room with free access to the bookshelves. The modern design of the interior, the rational and comfortable design of the reading areas, equipped in accordance with modern trends in the organization of library space, provide users with the ideal space for working both independently and in groups.

Today our library is a true palace of books, where everyone breathes in comfort and with high aesthetic taste.

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Lesya Ukrainka, real name Larisa Petrovna Kosach-Kvitka (Ukr. Larisa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka; February 13, 1871 – July 19 (August 1), 1913 – Ukrainian poetess, writer, translator. A vivid representative of Ukrainian revolutionary romanticism and critical realism.

She wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, lyrics, drama, prose, journalism; worked in the field of folklore (220 folk tunes recorded from her voice); actively participated in the Ukrainian national movement.

She is known for her collections of poems “On the Wings of Songs” (1893), “Thoughts and Dreams” (1899), “Reviews” (1902), poems “Old Fairy Tale” (1893), “One Word” (1903), dramas “Boyarynya” (1913), “Cassandra” (1903-1907), “In the Catacombs” (1905), “Forest Song” (1911) and others.

She participated in the socialist movement, was a co-founder of the group “Ukrainian Social Democracy”; she was engaged in the translation into Ukrainian of the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but there is no reliable evidence that the resulting text belongs to her.

According to the results of surveys of Ukrainians, Lesya Ukrainka is now among the three most outstanding compatriots, along with Taras Shevchenko and Bohdan Khmelnitsky.

She is the only woman whose portrait appears on Ukrainian banknotes. Literary scholars recognize her as one of the brightest European modernists and one of the best representatives of Ukrainian literature. Already at the age of 16 she translated passages from Mickiewicz, and a few years later, just like the classicist asked in her poem the question “Shall I call it friendship? Or call it love?”.

She was born in 1871 in Novograd-Volynsky and at birth was named Larisa Petrovna Kosach-Kvitka. Lesya’s family was prosperous, her parents had a good education (her mother, Olga Petrovna Dragomanova-Kosach, was a writer and literary critic, and her father was a lawyer). However, the poetess’s childhood was not only under the banner of comprehensive creative and intellectual development, but also under the weight of a terrible disease – tuberculosis, which attacked the bones, lungs and kidneys. Because of it, Lesya was often sent abroad for treatment: to Egypt, Georgia, Greece and Italy. Perhaps these travels influenced the girl’s interest in languages and other cultures: Lesya knew Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German and English, perfectly oriented in classical and modern European literature.

“This circumstance strongly influenced the work of the writer, who made the greatest (after Ivan Franko) contribution to the modernization of Ukrainian literature, its development and escape from narrow regionalism” — so wrote about the importance of Lesya Ukrainka’s linguistic skills the writer and translator Tadeusz Chruszelewski, who called the poetess ‘both Ukrainian and European’….