5 Hryven Taras Shevchenko All-Ukrainian 'Prosvita' Society

The All-Ukrainian Prosvita Society — founded in Kyiv in 1906 and suppressed by Soviet authorities in 1930 — was rehabilitated in 1991 immediately following Ukrainian independence, making it one of the first cultural institutions restored after the collapse of the USSR. Its founding purpose was literacy and Ukrainian-language education at a time when the Ems Decree of 1876 still cast a long shadow over public use of the language. Shevchenko was the society's ideological anchor from the outset; his poetry had been the primary vehicle through which Ukrainian identity survived decades of Tsarist cultural prohibition.