КОЛЕКЦІЯ МУЗЕЮ ВИЗВОЛЬНОЇ БОРОТЬБИ УКРАЇНИ (1925–1948) В ПРАЗІ: РОСІЙСЬКО-РАДЯНСЬКІ ЗЛОЧИНИ ПРОТИ КУЛЬТУРНИХ ЦІННОСТЕЙ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО НАРОДУ

The article examines the history of the collection creation of the Museum of the Liberation Struggle of Ukraine (1925–1948) in Prague and focuses on the destruction of the Museum and the secret export of its materials to the USSR, where these collections were kept in special storage facilities for half a century, and are now dispersed among various archival institutions. The stated problem is consistent with the current situation in Ukraine, since dozens of museums and other cultural institutions were destroyed and looted under the conditions of the Russian full-scale invasion, which testifies to the unchanging criminal nature of the Russian government and its permanent hatred of the Ukrainian people and their culture. There were analyzed the main sources and publications of the specified topic, in which the solution to this problem was initiated, and also a view on the destruction of the collection of the Museum of the Liberation Struggle of Ukraine (MLSU) in the context of the current losses of the cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people was highlighted. The purpose of the article: to show the MLSU as an autonomous private institution that belonged to the Society of the MLSU and functioned exclusively on the funds of membership fees, donations of Ukrainian emigrants and Ukrainians in the diaspora for the sake of a lofty idea – the collection and preservation of cultural values of the Ukrainian people and their return to mainland Ukraine after indepen-dence. This article provides for the following tasks: to analyze the formation and development of the MLSU; highlight the role of its funders and emp-loyees in the formation, preservation and popularization of funds; to show the personal contribution to the establishment and development of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of its directors and employees (Dmytro Antonovych, Volodymyr Miyakovsky, Simon Narizhnyi, Stepan Siropolko and other Ukrainian intellectuals); to reveal the relations of the Museum’s management with representatives of the Czechoslovak authori-ties and the Ukrainian diaspora in the USA; highlight the tragic pages of the MLSU related to its destruction in February 1945, transfer of funds to the institutions of Czechoslovakia and the predatory export of the main part of artifacts to the USSR in 1948, the deliberate scattering of the complete collection of the Museum, as incompatible with national politics and ideo-logy of the Russian-Soviet government, according to archival institutions in the Ukrainian SSR and on the territory of Russia. Keywords: Museum of the Liberation Struggle of Ukraine in Prague, cultural values of the Ukrainian people, emigration, diaspora, Russian-So-viet crimes.