Yasinia. The Museum of Local History — an Educational Centre and a Brand of the Hutsul Region

Every town or village ought to begin with a museum of local history or at least a museum room. Local history exhibitions preserve our traditions and cultural heritage, our historical records and objects of the past; they shape the national ethnic code and touch the state of the soul. In Yasinia, in the Zakarpattia region, one of the finest museums of local history in the district has been running since 1966.

Yasinia. Museum of Local History

The Yasinia museum stands practically in the centre of the town, on Hrushevskoho Street.

 

Driving along the H 09 road Mukachevo-Ivano-Frankivsk-Lviv, note the two-storey wooden villa whose facade bears a bas-relief of the first settler and founder of the Holy Ascension (Strukivska) Church, the shepherd Ivan Struk.

Yasinia. Museum of Local History. Memorial plaque to the legendary shepherd Ivan Struk

This cultural and educational institution combines research, learning and guided tours. The objects of the material and spiritual culture of the Yasinia area are presented in four departments: a department with the interior of a Hutsul cottage of the 18th-19th centuries, a household department with a collection of the Hutsuls' work tools, a department of the nature of the Carpathians, and a department of Hutsul folk crafts.

 

Yasinia. The Museum. Exhibits

The exhibitions were created through the painstaking work of the museum staff, the keepers of the cultural heritage of Yasinia and the neighbouring villages.

Many documents, musical instruments, garments and pieces of tableware and furniture were donated by local people, enriching the ethnographic collections with objects from the history of their native land.

 

Yasinia. Museum of Local History. Exhibits

Photographs that captured memorable events, monument-churches and both prominent and ordinary Yasinia folk of around a hundred years ago are of real historical value.

 

Yasinia. Museum of Local History. Historical photographs

The Hutsuls are renowned for their knowledge of the structure of wood and their skill in making all manner of household and artistic articles from it. The people of Yasinia were active participants in the liberation movement led by Oleksa Dovbush, whose sculpted likeness was made by masters of woodcarving.

Yasinia. A wooden bust of Oleksa Dovbush

The nature department displays the fauna that inhabit the Land of Mountains.

Yasinia. Museum of Local History. The exhibit of the animal world of the Carpathians

Professionally made display stands present information about the birds and the rare plants and animals found in the forests of the Yasinia forestry and hunting enterprise.

 

Yasinia. Museum of Local History. Information stands

A separate stand tells us that the source of the Chorna Tysa river lies in the mountain massif of the Svydovets range and is the most distant of the springs of the international waterway of the Tysa, which flows through the territory of five states.

 

Yasinia. Museum of Local History. An information stand

Even city museums cannot always create art departments with paintings by local artists. On the second floor of the Yasinia museum a picture gallery has been opened, presenting the works of such masters of the brush as I. H. Hapiak, V. B. Tselousov, Oksana Zleta, M. M. Vlad, Yu. M. Shelevytskyi and other folk talents of Zakarpattia.

 

Yasinia. The picture gallery

The fate of Yasinia is bound up inseparably with the names of the organisers of the Hutsul Republic — Stepan Klochurak and Dmytro Klimpush. On the square in front of the museum stands a monument to Stepan Klochurak, President of the Hutsul Republic.

 

Yasinia. Monument to Stepan Klochurak, President of the Hutsul Republic

Museum address: Yasinia, Rakhiv district, Zakarpattia region, 21 Hrushevskoho Street.