Polish Heritage in Ukraine: results of the 2024 campaign
By: antanana, a member of Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine organising team
Almost 5200 photos were submitted during the first ever campaign dedicated to Polish Heritage in a Ukrainian edition of Wiki Loves Monuments international photo contest. This special category was a joint project of Wikimedia Polska and Wikimedia Ukraine. You can read more about the results, and see winning works below.
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There are a lot of monuments of Polish origin on the territory of Ukraine due to a long shared – and at times complicated – history. There were peaceful times of co-existence, and turbulent times of wars and rebellions, and quite a few tragic pages of a voluminous book of relationships. Not all of these monuments are registered and protected according to the Ukrainian laws, let alone properly cared for by the state authorities or local communities, as the Polish communities living in Ukraine now are not that numerous, and the current, more active stage in the Russo-Ukrainian War is not making things easier. The main purpose of a separate special category was to draw attention to these monuments and their condition, and to document them for Wikipedia.
Volunteers created lists for the special category, containing 1303 monuments (471 out of them with no official protective status), but there is much more objects to cover.
When creating lists for special categories, we significantly rely on our own participants — they send us information about their villages' abandoned cemeteries or forgotten churches, usually without a recognised status as a "cultural monument" on a local or state level. A lot of our participants travel around Ukraine, and they know spots only the locals know. If there are any additional publications, we add them to the lists, add coordinates etc. The information is often very fragmentary, but one has to start somewhere.
This time, for example, I worked on the lists of Polish heritage in Kyiv. It was interesting to see how active was the Polish community here, how many monuments we think of as "truly ours" can have whole angles of their history our school curriculum is not stressing out. For example, the monument in second place of the international contest this year[1], Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, once had quite a lot of Polish students, more than half of them up to 1858-1859, and there was even a Catholic chapel in the University itself to serve their needs[2]. I think by organising these special categories we can see how non-linear the history of our monuments is, and we can learn more aspects, improve Wikipedia articles, and also motivate people to upload pictures.
There was also some personal interest for me in this work — my maternal great grandmother was Polish, from a noble family of Osiecki of Warsaw, and lived in Kyiv. This was not something one would brag about in the Soviet times
— Xsandriel, one of the volunteers who helped to create the special category lists, commenting on her experience
During the campaign itself 126 participants submitted almost 5200 photos, picturing 644 monuments (215 out of them are not registered as monuments) from 17 regions of Ukraine.
Winners were chosen by a separate jury panel, which included Polish Wikimedians and partners of Wikimedia Polska:
Michał Laszczkowski — activist, historian, organiser of conservation work on historical buildings in Central and Eastern Europe;
Damian Kujawa — Wikimedian, volunteer, activist;
Julia Szablowska — photo editor, photographer, curator;
Magdalena Lachowicz — Assistant Professor at the Department of Eastern Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland;
Julia Maria Koszewska — sociologist, librarian, activist and producer.
As the number of the work submitted was quite high, there was a pre-selection round. 16 volunteers both from Ukraine and Poland took part in reviewing the images. They reviewed 4864 images (the organising team removed images of lower resolution or submitted by the participants with conflict of interest, like organisers and jury members), divided in such a way, that each image was viewed by 3 volunteers. Out of this round 2009 photos proceeded to the main jury.
I've been involved in the Ukrainian edition of Wiki Loves Monuments international photo contest for several years now, categorising submitted photos and selecting the best ones to be evaluated by the jury. I've been living in Poland for many years, so I was pleased that we now have a special category for Polish heritage sites in Ukraine.
I'm interested in and well-acquainted in Polish culture and history, I travel extensively in Ukraine, and I am fluent in both Polish and Ukrainian languages. That's why I was happy to help with categorisation, correction and creation of new object IDs, as well as supplementing lists.
I happen to dedicate a good amount of time to working with images of Polish burials and cemeteries. There are cases when, while cleaning a category of a big cemetery, for example, Baikove in Kyiv or Lychakiv in Lviv, I come across photographs of graves with inscriptions on the tombstones in Polish, but without detailed descriptions or subcategories. Then I start searching, and it is often possible to find other images of these graves on Wikimedia Commons, in Wikipedia articles or in Wikidata, and then they can be all organised together for better find-ability, correcting mistakes etc.
Preserving memory is important and necessary work. It's great that Wikimedia Ukraine and Wikimedia Poland are once again cooperating and taking on this project, which is so necessary, especially now
— shared UA-Lora, one of the pre-selection volunteers
Each jury member had a bit over 800 pictures to look through, in such a way that each work was viewed by two members. 228 pictures made it to the round two, where each jury member were asked to evaluate each work from 1 (minimum) to 10 (maximum) points. The guidance when evaluating pictures was:
from 0 up to 3 for technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.);
from 0 to 3 for usefulness of the image for Wikipedia;
from 0 to 3 for originality.
1 additional point for something special in the picture.
Time constraints and situation in Ukraine made it difficult to organise a previously planned special category online meeting, so the results were discussed async.
The results are presented below, and they are grouped thematically, to demonstrate the range of Polish heritage in Ukraine.
The palace itself dates back to 1893 and it is a part of the complex (park and palace). It belonged to a local Polish landowner called Felix Shostakovsky (Shostkovski). Throughout the history the palace hosted a school, and a village club, and even tuberculosis sanatorium. There is no Wikipedia article about it yet. It is currently in ruins, the official number of residents in Buhaivka is 216, there is not enough local community to restore it or keep it from disappearing. The winning photos were taken on June 8, 2024.
The winning pictures are also from June 8, 2024. They depict a manor house in the village of Chahiv, Vinnytsia region. The manor house dates back to the second half of the 19th century. It is a complex of monuments which includes the manager's house, the servants' house, and a park. According to media reports, the estate was bought by Ihor and Olena Ryabtsev, who plan to settle there and are therefore engaged in reconstruction. The last landowners mentioned in the sources were of Polish origin, the Hrushchynskis or Yanovskys[3][4]. Official number of the residents in the village is 771.
This work depicts a castle in the village of Olesko, Lviv region. This is an architectural monument of national importance. Polish King John III Sobieski was born here. The photo was taken on October 30, 2020.
The aerial photo depicts St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, Kyiv was taken on June 24, 2021. This is an architectural monument of national importance. The church's stained glass windows were damaged during a Russian missile attack on 20 December 2024 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the importance of documenting cultural heritage, as even if the monuments are not directly hit during the war, they can still sustain damages. As a note, having a separate category dedicated to Polish monuments, and having restrictions due to the state of war in Ukraine, that only photos taken no later than June 30, 2024 could participate in the contest, with the only exception of the restrictions being pictures interiors of monuments – their pictures can be submitted even if the pictures were taken during the competition in October, motivated participants to upload more pictures of the interiors of the monuments. As a result, quite a few pictures of the interiors of the Church were uploaded during the contest, especially ones of the stained glass... just to be destroyed or damaged a few months after the contest ended.
The work depicts the tomb (funeral) chapel of the count Zabielski's family (Trzaska coat of arms). The building does not have an official protected status. Photo was taken on February 4, 2023. The village has 446 residents.
This photo depicts the Roman Catholic cemetery in the town of Sataniv, Khmelnytskyi region. It was taken on October 21, 2016. The cemetery is not protected as a cultural heritage site.
The results of the joint project and winners were celebrated at the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine hybrid awards ceremony on May 31, 2025[6].
At the awards Ceremony
The collage of winners
Diplomas and souvenirs for winners
Best videos
Maksym Uvaiev (on screen), a video jury member
Winners and active participants
Vadym Posternak (on screen), the most active participant
The awards ceremony participants (on- and offline)
Special categories dedicated to cultural monuments of different peoples living on the territory of Ukraine is an interesting way to bypass, so to say, a very Soviet approach to granting an official protective status to the monuments. Soviet authorities wanted to create a universal Soviet person, without any religious or national identity, and thus they tried not to talk about some aspects of history, and that influenced which cultural sites were designated as monuments and which were not. A lot of Polish heritage is not in the official lists, especially cemeteries, churches, and funeral chapels — and they are also not well tended to, as there is no longer big enough local communities living near them. And with the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine, these monuments also at a higher risk of being destroyed. I hope we will see this project continuing next year as well.
And if you are interested to help as a pre-selection volunteer, please fill in the form
— Venzz, Board member of Wikimedia Ukraine, Wiki Loves Monuments volunteer
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Palace ruins. Buhaivka, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine © Oleksandr Malyon, CC BY-SA 4.0
Palace ruins. Buhaivka, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine © Oleksandr Malyon, CC BY-SA 4.0
Estate. Chahiv, Vinnytsia Oblast, Olesko Castle© Oleksandr Malyon, CC BY-SA 4.0
Estate. Chahiv, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine © Oleksandr Malyon, CC BY-SA 4.0
Olesko Castle, Lviv Oblast, Olesko Castle © Kateryna Polishchuk, CC BY-SA 4.0
St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, Kyiv, Ukraine © Maksym Popelnyukh, CC BY-SA 4.0
Stained glass (March 12, 2024) © Antonina Vyshnevska, CC BY-SA 4.0
Damages after Russian missile attack in the morning of 20 December 2024 © Mcip.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0
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Funeral chapel. Mala Luka, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine © Dmytro Poliukhovych, CC BY-SA 4.0
Catholic cemetery. Sataniv, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine © Dmytro Poliukhovych, CC BY-SA 4.0
At the awards Ceremony
The collage of winners
Diplomas and souvenirs for winners
Best videos
Maksym Uvaiev (on screen), a video jury member
Winners and active participants
Vadym Posternak (on screen), the most active participant
The awards ceremony participants (on- and offline)
