Ukraine | eaf museum

UKRAINE

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. Its capital and largest city is Kiev. Because of the country's location its culture has been influenced by both Europe and Asia.
Over the centuries Ukrainian people have developed their own arts of music, theatre, and painting. Some Ukrainian artists and their masterpieces are famous not only in Ukraine but also all over the world.
Ukrainian music has a long history and covers diverse and multiple component elements of the music that is found in the Western and Eastern musical civilization.

Folk traditions have preserved to this day original songs, lyrical, humorous, and patriotic and others. «Kobza», «bandura», «sopilka» are among most famous national musical instruments. Artisan textile arts play an important role in Ukrainian culture, especially in Ukrainian wedding traditions. Ukrainian embroidery, weaving, and lace-making are used in traditional folk dress and in traditional celebrations.

The iconic embroidered shirt or blouse, the vyshyvanka, is the most recognizable part of Ukrainian national costume, and even has its own public celebration in May. For men, traditional dress also includes kozhukh, kontusz, żupan and sharovary. For women, traditional dress includes kozhushanka, ochipok for married women, and Ukrainian wreath for unmarried girls.
Traditional dances are popular within Ukraine, many of which derive from rural Cossack villages. One Ukrainian style of dancing is called the kalyna. Both men and women participate in this type of dancing. Another, called the hopak is much more lively, and involves many fast-paced movements. Many significant Ukrainian holidays and events are based on the old Julian Calendar and so differ from their Gregorian counterparts. These include Christmas and New Year's Eve, both of which are highly important in Ukrainian culture. Social gatherings like Vechornytsi have a long history in Ukrainian culture, and so do traditional holidays like Ivan Kupala Day, Maslenitsa, Koledovanie and Malanka.
Numerous writers have contributed to the country's rich literary history such as Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko. Ukrainian origin on the father's side were the world-famous composers P.Tchaikovsky and S.Prokofiev. Famous representatives of Ukrainian art were O.Vishnya, L.Ukrainka, N.Gogol, I.Repin, M.Lysenko, M.Bulgakov and many others.

Ukraine is a multinational country, representatives of different nations live in it, with their own original, unique culture. Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Moldavians, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, Jews, Armenians, Greeks, etc. live in Ukraine.

CRIMEAN TATAR CULTURE

Crimean Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group and nation who are an indigenous people of Crimea.

From 1944 until the 1980s of the 20th century, Crimean Tatars were tragically deported. The Crimean Tatars, like other peoples of the Crimea expelled in 1941-1944, were dispersed over a large territory from the Volga region and the Urals to Central Asia and Siberia. At the end of this period, they began to return to the Crimea. The Crimean Tatars managed to preserve their identity (language, religion, family life traditions, folk rituals, songs, dances, national cuisine), although many of the centuries-old cultural values were lost. There are large diasporas of Crimean Tatars in Turkey, Uzbekistan, on the mainland of Ukraine and in some other Eastern European countries.