Icons from the museum’s collection digitised

Our project, ‘History Preserved in Digital Format,’ is coming to an end, and today we would like to share with you the digitisation of icons from our museum collection. Icons are of particular value because it is well known how brutally the communist criminal regime fought against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Religion has always been a cornerstone of traditional Ukrainian culture.

The icon you see in this post, the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, belonged to the Kryvonis family, descendants of a famous and ancient Cossack family originating from the village of Sobycheve (now the Sumy region). It was donated to the Museum in 2021 by a descendant of the family.

This household icon is a valuable historical artefact. With the establishment of the Soviet occupation, the Kryvonis, like many other wealthy owners, were dekulakised. The five Kryvonis brothers, Ivan, Oleksii, Serhii, Semion, and Dmytro, resisted the communist regime. In 1929, their family was deprived of all their property, and it was planned to exile them to Siberia. The icon was preserved because the relatives managed to hide it during the confiscation of their property by the Communists.

Therefore, this icon is a symbol of the preserved memory of dignity and freedom, the value of freedom and one’s own identity.

Thanks to our project, this icon and other artworks from the museum’s collection will be preserved not only in the collections but also in digital format, which will allow it to be exhibited anywhere in the world.
The project “History Preserved in Digital Format” is supported by the European Union under the House of Europe programme.
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