Roksoliana Danchyn
Director
Roksoliana Danchyn is the director of the Sambir ethnographic historical museum "Boykivshchyna". After leaving the secondary school № 2 in Sambir, she afterwards graduated from the faculty of philology of the Drohobych Pedagogical Institute. In 1970-ies joined the human rights movement and during all the years she was an active participant of liberation struggle. After the declaration of independence of Ukraine Roksoliana Danchyn together with a group of the like-minded persons headed the movement for the renewal of the "Boykivshchyna" Company and the ethnographic historical museum "Boykivshchyna".
The late 19th - early 20th centuries were marked in Halychyna by the considerable revival of the national movement of the advanced intellectuals. The idea of the national independence received the real shape - the aspiration for the regional autonomy. The Halychyna intellectuals were determined against the attempts of Poland to make Halychyna a part of the Polish state, to annihilation of material sights of culture and appropriation of spiritual values of the Ukrainian people, the saving of which meant the saving of themselves as a nation. Therefore the creation of the "Boykivshchyna" museum in Sambir became one of the vectors of the logical process of spiritual revival of the Ukrainian people in the pre-war Halychyna.
The enthusiasts-initiators of creation of the "Boykivshchyna" society in August, 1927 and the same name museum afterwards, were the teacher of the local upper secondary school, lawyers, doctors, among which there were the teacher, writer and museum expert Ivan Fylypchak; the attorney and a public person Volodymyr Hurkevych; the doctor, ethnographer, archaeologist and publicist Volodymyr Kobilnyk; the teacher, museum expert and writer Antin Kniazhynskyi; the teacher, publicist and research worker Mykhailo Skoryk; the engineer, cartographer and a public person Volodymyr Korduba.
Regardless of the active cultural and educative work, carried out by the "Boykivshchyna" society and the museum in Sambir, there started the scientific and publishing activity. With this purpose the scientists of the society founded the periodical edition the "Litopys Boikivshchyny" (Boykivshchyna Chronicle), on the pages of which there was highlighted the history of the native region, the everyday life of the population of the western part of Ukraine. In terms of the post-war repressions in the Western Ukraine, which directly concerned "Boykivshchyna" activists Ivan Fylypchak, Antin Kniazhynskyi and others, the fate of the museum was determined by the cruel resolution of the Ministry of Culture of the Ukrainian SSR - the liquidation.
The revival of the museum coincided with the creation of the independent Ukrainian state. In December, 1990 the restored ethnographic historical museum "Boykivshchyna" was opened in the building of the 17th century on the fundament of the 16th century in the former building of the parish school. The aim of the functioning of the "Boykivshchyna" museum is completing, saving, restoration, research, exhibiting and popularization of the historical and artistic and other sights of material and spiritual culture of the Ukrainian people, service to the development of culture. The museum carries out organizational and research works, scientific completing of funds, research and funding work, scientific and expositional, mass scientific and educational and economic activities.
In 1995 the museum conducted the International historical and original seminar of the "Population of Boykivshchyna in the context of the Carpathian ethnic and cultural development". Over 80 research workers from Lviv, Kyiv, Drohobych, guests from abroad, in particular Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Germany took part in it.
In 1996 there was a historical and original conference "The past and the present of Boykivshchyna" on the occasion of
140th anniversary of birth of Mykhailo Zubrytskyi - active member of the Shevchenko scientific society, famous researcher of the history and ethnography of Halychyna of the 19th century.
Following the traditions of the founders of the society and the "Boykivshchyna" museum since 1997 the museum cooperates with the Sianotskyi museum of folk building: there was signed an agreement of mutual cooperation of the two museums, the basic tasks of which are the bilateral exchange of experience of the research and fund study; exchange of experience in the restoration of exhibits; mutual participation of the both museums in scientific conferences; exchange of publications (press, catalogues, monographs).
The museum carries out the line of expeditions in the villages of Sambir, Starosambir, Turka, Drohobuch, Stryi and Kalush districts for the replenishment of the museum collection with the new exhibits. As a result of the research and folklore expeditions on the territory of Boykivshchyna the funds of the museum were filled up by both with Boyky clothes (male female and child’s elements of traditional clothes of 19th-20th centuries) and the household objects (crockery, hand mortars, millstones, scoops, haletka, one of valuable exhibits is a dairy (beginning of the 20th cent.), spindles, flax brushes, etc.); musical instruments (Boyky pipes, cymbals, violins, pan-pipes, dentsivka, basoli, etc.), and also samples of the Boyky embroideries in cross-stitch and satin-stitch, the pattern of which is decorated with dark blue, red, black filaments, typical of the Boyky region. With every year the funds of the museum are filled up due to the tedious work of the museum personnel, and also charity work of the Sambir habitants and Sambir Diaspora. Today the funds of the museum number over 18 thousand of exhibits and about 8 thousand items of library fund (books, magazines and newspaper periodicals).
The present-day activity of the museum is the continuation of the outstanding work of our predecessors. There are two permanent exhibitions functioning at the museum: the "Household and material culture of Boyky and Boyky’s burden" and the exposition "The family of Kozakevych". It is a part of heritage of the Kozakevych and Kovshevych families (furniture dated the end of 19th - beginning of 20th cent., ancient bottles, cassettes, empire-style clock, album with pictures, first made in Halychyna, collection of the father’s paintings, family portraits by the Polish artists Martin Yablenskyi and Yan Pinionzhek, collection of the old Ukrainian postcards, interesting documents of the 16th-19th centuries etc.), left by Lidiya Kozakevych for the Ukrainian people. The scientific work over the new display of the national liberation movement "Struggle for the Ukrainian state system in Sambirshchyna and Boykivshchyna" is going on.
For the tourists, who want to get acquainted with the historical origin of the Ukrainian-boykys, their traditions, customs, way of life and culture, the personnel of the museum conducts lectures, excursions, thematic evenings. Visiting him, you will feel the battle spirit of the past and the hospitality of the present.

P.O.Box 40, 4 Chaikovskoho Street, 81400 Sambir, Lviv region
tel./fax: +38 (03236) 6-01-94
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