Women's Cooperative Trud

A women's industrial union called Trud (Labor) was founded in Lviv in early 1901. Olena Berezhnytska-Budzova's memoirs reveal a specific date — the 16th of March (Бережницька-Будзова, 1984). The organization operated on the basis of cooperation and aimed to combine work and education: the cooperative produced and sold fabrics and clothes made by the female members of the union, and the money earned was used to establish a school of cutting and sewing for those desiring to learn this craft. The initiative to create the Trud was taken by the Ruthenian Women's Club (ukr. Клуб Русинок), a Ukrainian women's association that had existed in the city since 1893 (Богачевська-Хом'як, 2018: 184). Hermina Shukhevych, the head of the Ruthenian Women's Club at the time, and Maria Biletska, an educator and an activist of the women's movement and a member of the Club's branch, were most active in the creation of this union. Vasyl Nahirny and Apollon Nychay, the most famous Ukrainian cooperators and founders of the first Ukrainian cooperative called Narodna Torhovlia (People's Trade), provided advice.

Hermina Shukhevych's private correspondence records her efforts to collect donations necessary to fund the new organization. She collected money from her family and friends, as well as through advertisements in Ukrainian periodicals (ЛННБС 11/496/52: 15; 11/372/41: 4-5). "Lend a helping hand to the Ruthenian woman so that she can prove that she is able to return to you and the whole of Ruthenian society the hundredfold minute contribution, which you have made to the national altar through the labor of her hands!" — the "Dilo" newspaper appealed in January 1901, announcing Hermina Shukhevych's call for the Trud (Діло, 1901, ч. 2: 3). 

According to a contemporary, Lidia Burachynska, the Trud was not a classic cooperative creation, as it was not initiated and created directly by "tailors' forces." The initiative to found it came from "Ukrainian patriotic circles" that chose the cooperative form for their work (Burachynska, 1987: 82). These patriotic forces were female representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the time who had the resources to assume the role of national leadership over women from less affluent social classes. 

For the Ruthenian Women's Club, as a parent organization, the Trud was a significant step forward in the practice of self-organization. The organizational success of women, like that of men, depended on a network of personal contacts, friendships, and good relations within their class. However, unlike men, women had much less control over money, even their own (especially married women). They tended to link their community work to career advancement, political ambitions, or political rights in general, which they had long been deprived of. The example of the women's cooperative Trud, a self-sustaining institution that had to earn money for itself and provide jobs and, consequently, money for its students, was, on the one hand, the result of lessons learned in financial literacy after a decade of essentially volunteer, i.e., completely free, women's charitable or educational work, and, therefore, the need to constantly look for donors. On the other hand, for the Ruthenian Women's Club, the Trud cooperative was also the result of the reformation of the traditional form of assistance to the poor into a more rational or scientific approach to social work, i.e., a modern attempt to address the causes of poverty rather than its consequences (Stratigakos, 2008: 138).

Almost from the very beginning of its existence, the Trud had its own real estate in the city center: the organization purchased a building at 39 Rynok Square. This investment was probably one of the keys to the cooperative's survival in the period of future political (the First World War, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the emergence of the Polish Republic) and economic turbulence (the economic crisis of the 1930s). 

The Trud started from organizing various two or three month courses (embroidery, cutting, and sewing) and developed into a three-year school, which was open to girls after they had completed the 6th grade of the "people's school", i.e., from the age of 15. On 1 April 1903, the "Dilo", which actively followed the Trud activities in the early years of the latter's existence, reported the opening of a "fashion salon" there supervised by Anna Hryhorovych (Hryhorovycheva), the owner of a model school ("school of fashion design") (Діло, 1903, ч. 62: 3). 

Over time, the cooperative expanded beyond Lviv, opening its branches in other towns of Galicia: Przemysl, Stanislav, and Drohobych (Жіноче діло, 1912: 2; Медвідь, Гриценко, 2022). 

On the Ukrainian mental map of Galicia, the women's cooperative Trud was probably prominent. At least, this is evidenced by its being referred to in seemingly unexpected contexts, like matrimonial ads, which were common in the advertising sections of the daily press at the time. For example, in 1904, the "Ruslan" newspaper published an advertisement from a postenfuerer of the imperial gendarmerie (according to the dictionary of Ivan Franko's works, "postenfuerer" was a district police officer or chief of a police post, note by author), in which among the requirements for the desired candidate, preference was given to "young ladies from the Trud society" (Руслан, 1904, ч. 31: 4). 

Ultimately, the leaders of this organization worked for their image and recognition. The Ruthenian Women's Club took care of Ukrainian students of Lviv University, in particular, during the secession, by providing them with a "cheap canteen" located in the Trud building (Залізняк, 1950).

The founding of the Trud almost coincided with the emergence of another Ukrainian women's association in the city, the Circle of Ukrainian Girls (ukr. Клуб українських дівчат). According to one of those "girls", Olena Berezhnytska-Budzova, "the members of the circle did not understand the importance of the cause (Trud, note by author). It seemed to us that it was useless to think about tailoring, dresses, hats, and fashions when the whole women's world was talking about emancipation" (Бережницька-Будзова, 1984). 

The differences between the older generation of Ukrainian women's movement participants (the Ruthenian Women's Club) and the younger generation (the Circle of Ukrainian Girls), as exemplified by the Trud, were probably not so much conceptual or ideological dissimilarities as slightly different interpretations of their methods to achieve their goals. The girls saw themselves as far more progressive than their predecessors. In a literal and metaphorical sense, the members of the Ruthenian Women's Club were the mothers of the Circle; for some, the Club became a reference point on whose cultural and educational initiatives they grew up; for others, it was a brainchild in a very direct way. This was the case with Daria Starosolska (née Shukhevych), the daughter of Hermina and Volodymyr Shukhevych, and a co-founder of the Ukrainian Girls' Club. Obviously, the Club's initiative to create the Trud did not seem very progressive to the "girls" of that time. However, as practice revealed, it was the only one of these societies (at least under their own names and with their own structures) to survive the First World War and the postwar decades; it was only due to Soviet nationalization that it ceased its existence. 

In 1926, the Trud general meeting's report listed among the cooperative's initiatives a cutting and sewing school with 70 students, a dress and underwear workshop, and a tailoring equipment shop (Бурачинська, 1987: 68). In addition to practical subjects, the school's students also received theoretical knowledge — not within the Trud, however, but at the professional supplementary courses of the Ridna Shkola society. At the end of their studies, the students took an exam at the Industrial Chamber (pol. Izba Przemysłowa) and received a diploma of a laborer. With this diploma, they could get a position at a tailoring company or start their own business. However, for the latter option, one had to pass another additional exam, which also involved an additional fee of one hundred dollars (Бурачинська, 1987: 70).  

In 1927, the Trud was headed by a new chairwoman, Olena Zalizniak, a former member of the Circle of Ukrainian Girls. She led the cooperative almost until the end of Trud's existence and her forced evacuation from the city due to the Soviet army's advance into Lviv in September 1939. The name of Olena Zalizniak, a member of the largest Ukrainian women's organization of the time, the Union of Ukrainian Women (ukr. Союз Українок), with whom the Trud shared both ideological and program goals (the Union of Ukrainian Women had a separate cooperative section in its structure that was responsible for spreading cooperative ideas among women; such cooperative sections existed in each branch of the Union), is associated with the major reforms of the Trud in the late 1920s. 

Under her leadership, the three-year cooperative school was transformed into an industrial school for women, providing its students with a complete education, meaning that its students no longer had to study theoretical subjects outside of the Trud. The right to open such an industrial school, called the Women's Craft School of the Trud Cooperative in Lviv, was granted in 1929. The theoretical subjects taught at the school included the Ukrainian and Polish languages, literature, history of both nations, religion, as well as correspondence and bookkeeping. Practical subjects included cutting, modeling, sewing, embroidery, and cooking. There were also singing and physical education classes.

Around the same time, the Trud acquired another property, a building on Janowska Street (present-day Shevchenka Street), for a girls' craft boarding school. The money for this purchase was raised by Mykhaylyna Havykovych, a member of the Trud board, during her trip to visit her relatives in America in 1928. The organization's presidium authorized her to conduct such a collection among the Ukrainian community there (Бурачинська, 1987: 71). 

The Great Depression that rocked Europe in the early 1930s could not but affect the organization. In order to stay afloat during the economic crisis, the Trud opened six-month cooking and home economics courses, which later became twelve-month ones. According to contemporaries, they were used primarily by "young people from the surrounding villages" who were preparing to enter the city's service market, including domestic service. Olena Lukashevska, a graduate of the Vienna School of Economics, became the curator of the economic course. The cooperative's membership fee was raised from $10 to $30 (the fee was measured in foreign currency due to the devaluation of the Polish zloty). At the same time, the shop had to be closed (at 39 Rynok Square), as it proved to be unprofitable. 

By the mid-1930s, the situation had improved somewhat, as in 1935 the Trud offered its members a new opportunity — recreational and educational camps, then called oseli (homes). The first such camp, created by the Commission of Educational Homes under the Ukrainian Regional Society for the Protection of Children and Youth, was held in the village of Rozhanka (which one, Upper or Lower, remains unknown) in the Boykivshchyna region. The camp was run by female members of the Plast "Swallows" group. In 1936, a similar camp was organized in Slavske. 

The second half of the 1930s was also marked by the emergence of a new initiative in the Trud women's cooperative, "embroidered dress evenings", which later grew into "Ukrainian fashion shows". The first such show took place on 8 May 1938 in cooperation with the Ukrainian Women's Union's industrial cooperative Ukrainian Folk Art (ukr. Українське Народнє Мистецтво). The best models were published in the "Nova Khata" magazine. Members of the Trud union, together with the Ukrainian Women's Union, organized folk costume evenings not only in the cities and towns of Galicia but also in Warsaw, Prague, and Chicago (Пасіцька, 2019: 91). 

The Galician women's cooperative movement was obviously not outside the European context. The head of the Trud, Olena Zalizniak, represented Ukrainian women's cooperatives, which accounted for 15% of the members of all Ukrainian cooperatives of that time, at the Congress of the International Cooperative Guild in Paris. It was a large international organization that brought together women from different countries and types of cooperatives. The Ukrainian delegation, headed by Olena Zalizniak, was a member of the presidium at the last congress of this guild before the Second World War. The end of the Trud, and with it the entrepreneurial initiative of hundreds of other enterprises, was brought about by post-war Sovietisation that established a radically different form of economic relations.