This week in history

July 17 1933: The first riverboat sails from Kyiv to Kherson after the completion of the Dniprohes Hydropower Station and the removal of the Dnipro rapids.

1958: The Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR resolves to shut down 8 out of 40 monasteries in Ukraine.

July 18 1946: The Ukrainian Youth Association (Spilka ukrainskoi molodi-SUM) resumes its work in emigration.

1968: Zaporizhstal launches a unique thin-stock rolling mill.

July 19 1918: The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is founded in Canada.

1995: The National Bank of Ukraine issues the Bohdan Khmelnytsky coin with a face value of 200,000 karbovantsi to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the birth of the distinguished Ukrainian hetman.

July 20 1920: The Council of People’s Commissars (Radnarkom) of the Ukrainian SSR resolves to establish Ukraine’s first medical research institute.

1993: The UN Security Council rules that the resolution on Sevastopil, passed by the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, has no juridical force.

July 21 1944: The Institute of History and Archaeology at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR is reorganized as two separate institutes.

1992: Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice registers the Ukrainian Conservative Party and the Ukrainian Youth Association.

July 22 1819: Premiere of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s Natalka-Poltavka.

2001: The official visit to Ukraine of Jiang Zemin, head of the People’s Republic of China, begins. The Chinese leader and President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine sign a number of bilateral agreements.

July 23 1920: Poltava hosts the First Congress of Gubernial Committees of Poor Peasants (komnezamy), where the questions of strengthening these committees, the creation of an alliance between the working class and the middle peasantry, and the liquidation of banditry are discussed.

1990: Leonid Kravchuk is elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR.