Women's Congress in Stanislaviv in 1934 and sports

The article analyzes the Women's Congress in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in 1934. The Congress took place at a difficult time for Ukraine. After World War I, Ukraine was occupied by Poland, Romania, the USSR, and Czechoslovakia. So Ukrainian sports also found themselves under occupation. To this should be added the genocide of the occupiers against the Ukrainian people. Of course, in such unfavorable conditions, the development of Ukrainian culture, traditions, history, sports, and physical education was hampered. Therefore, the organization of the Ukrainian Women's Congress in 1934 was to demonstrate to the whole world the indomitability of the Ukrainian people. Ukrainian women from all over the world participated in the Congress. The mass media wrote in detail about the course of the events of the Congress. But for some reason there was little information about track and field competitions in the Congress program. This is surprising, because women's sports in the world and among Ukrainians at that time reached a high level of development. This is confirmed by the fact that the athletics and rukhanka competitions were included in the congress program. A real miracle is that we have the opportunity to use the memories of a participant in the competition. From these memories we learn about the peculiarities of organizing and holding athletics competitions during the 1934 congress. These memories are unique for preserving the history of Ukrainian sports and women's sports in particular as a national memory of the Ukrainian people. In the following years, celebrating 50, 70, 90 years of the Ukrainian women's movement, the 1934 congress is constantly mentioned. At the same time, the sports component of the program remained unnoticed. We are now correcting this unfortunate situation and analyzing the athletics competitions in detail. The importance and relevance of this study is confirmed by the modern challenges of anti-Ukrainian propaganda, as well as the pressing problem of returning the true history of Ukrainian sports, which has been under occupation for decades.