About the project

Welcome to the Wooden Churches of Ukraine website - the first web resource dedicated to Ukrainian wooden architecture. At this page you can find information about the project, a part of which is this website, and about the people who have worked on it. How to take part in the website developing you can see here.

About the author

My name is Olena Krushynska, I'm the author and the one who realizes the "Creation of an internet portal and a photo catalogue of wooden architecture monuments "Wooden Churches of Ukraine"" supported with the grant of the President of Ukraine for talented youth.

I live in Kyiv, my native and favourite city. I graduated from Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University where I work at present as a member of professor O. Zaporozhets' scientific team and defended a Ph.D. thesis on analytical chemistry. My passion is to travel around towns and villages of Ukraine in search of architecture and nature wonders. I cooperate with "Mizhnarodnyj turyzm" (International tourism), "Welcome to Ukraine" and some other magazines and also engage in creating my own websites.
   Publications and selected articles list

   "Lviv reminiscences" - an informal Lviv photogallery, personal website

I`m the author of two guide-books:
   "Forty four wooden churches of Lviv region" (2007)
   "The two banks of the Zbruch river" (2008)

How was the idea of the project born?

While travelling along Ukraine's roads and paths, I assumed a special attitude to wooden churches. Still, a view of a wooden and roofed with shingles church which hides among firs somewhere in the Carpathians like a relict animal seems to me unreal and fantastic. Where can you find more authenticity? However, in contrast to castles and monasteries, even the best masterpieces of wooden architecture are known only to few people. When I entered the words "wooden church" in web search engines, the outcome was miserable. So an idea of creating a website dedicated entirely to the beautiful and unjustly neglected monuments appeared about 2005.

How was the grant received?

The abstract idea became a concrete one in 2005, when I decided to draw up a project and to enter it for the annual contest held by the Ministry for Family, Youth and Sport. After an appraisal and selection the project won one of the grants of the President of Ukraine for talented youth.
According to the grant conditions, the project was financed in 2006. Now our work goes on due to the enthusiasm of the author and volunteers of the project.

Participants and volunteers of the project

The WCU website is an author's but not personal one. That is, I've made it myself, from the very idea to the html-code, but all persons wishing are invited to join.

I'm pleased to congratulate everyone on the website appearance on the web and I'd like to wholeheartedly thank my friends, participants and volunteers of the project who put so much work into it.

A separate and all-sufficient part of the website is the web bibliography, professionally made by Mykola Zharkikh who is a participant of the project. His work is described in more detail on the Experts support page. Root ("The life of the Ukrainian Carpathians") helped with digitizing of thematic literature.

The English version of the website is created by another professional, a translator from Lviv Andriy Masliukh. However, he doesn't limit himself only to translating but actively enlarges our photo archive with his own photos of wooden churches. I can't underestimate his moral support, mostly in the form of encouraging e-mails delivered usually at 2 a.m. when we both are still working at our computers.

Individual thanks to all those who selflessly emerged into expeditionary work: Valentyn Stetsyuk, Pavlo Polubichko, Andriy Melnychuk, Olha Tymochko and the other participants of the "Dnister" expedition, Ihor Khoma, Svitlana and Rostyslav Lynnyk. Travelling to a few dozens of Lviv region wooden churches and, what's more, persuading their owners to let us in was possible due to the charisma of Ihor "Laser" Skal'skyj. An extremely large volume of work was done in an absolutely independent way by Viktor Hromyk. His work is described in more detail on the Experts support page.

I'd like to thank website owners Petro Vlasenko ("Ukraine. Photowalks"), Valentyn Stetsyuk ("Dnister reminiscences"), Artem Svyrydov ("OKO. Architecture and local lore of Ukraine"), Root ("The life of the Ukrainian Carpathians"), Serhiy Kiforenko ("Travels around Ukraine"), Roman Malenkov ("Ukraina incognita"), Ivan Dyvniy ("The Echo of Ages") for informational support and permission to use photos from their resources at the WCU website. More details about the mentioned and other websites of our partners you can find on the Links page.

Photos for publication at our website were sent by Denys Shashenok, Serhiy Krynycia, Yuriy Kozoriz, Maksym Mel'nykov (Photo vernisage), Artem Sokolov ("Globus" touristic club), Bohdan Khodanych, Ihor Khoma, Olha Fedonyuk, Nikita Ivanov, Mykola Vasylechko, Serhij Sheiko, Viktoria Kernychna, Oleksandr Voytovych, Ivanna Kuschuk, Roman Zakharchenko, Viktor Ivchuk, Volodymyr Voloschuk, Denys Zamiatyn, Yaroslav Krzevetskiy, Olexandr Stepanenko, Andriy Jakovenko, Andriy Kovalenko et al.

What we have done and plan to do

I have been working on the project since 2005. During this time, several thousands of kilometers have been covered by trains, cars, ramshackle buses, route taxis and, finally, by foot for the sake of wooden churches. At the moment our photo archive contains ~5500 pictures of wooden churches from more than 350 towns and villages. Just a little part of them is already published at the website which has at the moment over 3 thousand files of content (web pages, photos, drawings). You must have already seen words "...is under construction" on many pages of the resource. Particularly, regions where the largest number of wooden churches has been preserved are still under construction. No wonder - we have, for example, collected more materials concerning Lviv region than all the other regions together. Often a page contains only information provided by literature, modern photos and news are lacking... Our hope is that you will help us to cover those "white spots" by sending your own photos and observations.