Larysa Skoryk

Larysa Pavlivna Skoryk (Ukrainian: , née Kuzma; born 4 October 1939), is a Ukrainian architect and former politician, who is the professor of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture.

She served as a member of parliament, People's Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st convocation of the Verkhovna Rada from 1990 to 1994. She was the wife of composer and Hero of Ukraine Myroslav Skoryk.

Biography

Skoryk was born Larysa Kuzma on 4 October 1939 in Lubaczow (now Poland) into a family of teachers.

She graduated from school No. 5, then, in 1954, she was a student of Lviv Polytechnic Institute.

After she graduated from the Lviv Polytechnic Institute in 1960, By 1963, she was an senior architect of the design institute "Dipromisto" in Lviv.

The labor team of the Kyiv State Art Institute nominated her as a candidate for People's Deputies of Ukraine. On 18 March 1990, Skoryk won 45.04% of the votes she received in the 2nd round, and was therefore elected as a member of parliament, People's Deputy of Ukraine out of 26 applicants.

Reconstruction of the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kaniv

The building of the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kaniv underwent reconstruction for 7 years from 2003 to 2010, and already on August 23, 2010, the expected opening took place. But there was a very interesting backstory between the 2003 decision to restore the museum and Skoryk's bold move in March 2010 that she had a ready-made museum reconstruction project that would surprise every museum visitor.

Reserve "Babyn Yar"

In 2012, Skoryk presented the Development Concept of the National Historical and Memorial Reserve "Babyn Yar" developed by her own architectural workshop. According to this concept, the Museum of Memory of the Victims of "Babyn Yar" has the shape of a hexagonal "Star of David" in plan. The pre-project documentation of the construction of the museum according to Skoryk's project was approved by the Scientific and Methodological Council for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. Skoryk's development concept of the "Babyn Yar" nature reserve also received the approval of the Main Department of Urban Planning, Architecture and Design of the Urban Environment.

On 27 January 2014, she got into a political scandal with the participation of Galicians. Thus, during a round table organized by the first President of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, she had the imprudence to express her opinion: "I can't even say semi-educated, it's practically an uneducated horde plundering Ukraine. What freedom did they lack? Maybe freedom of speech? This is an invasion that will go down in history as an invasion of absolute barbarians." These words caused a public outcry, the result of which was the writing of an open letter by representatives of the Lviv intelligentsia to the architect and People's Deputy of the first convocation (NRU) Skoryk, in which they demanded a public apology from her, because, in their opinion, she allowed herself to "cynically humiliate and insult her own people, dividing them into "right" and "wrong", achieving extraordinary "discoveries", in particular, in anti-Galician judgments". In addition, they reminded her that thanks to their support, Skoryk received a deputy mandate in 1990. To understand the scale of the situation, it is enough to list the prominent people of that time who signed this appeal, namely: writer Roman Ivanychuk, People's Artist of Ukraine Bohdan Kozak, Director of MIOK of Lviv Polytechnic University Iryna Klyuchkovska, People's Artist of Ukraine Myroslav Otkovich, singer Sofiia Fedyna, General Director of the Lviv National Art Gallery named after B. G. Voznytskyi Larisa Voznytska-Razinkova, honored cultural worker of Ukraine Roman Yatsiv, member of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine Nina Bichuya, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize of Ukraine Roman Lubkivskyi, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize of Ukraine Vasyl Otkovych.

In March 2021, she participated in a teleconference with Moscow on the occasion of Taras Shevchenko's birthday at the Kyiv representative office of the Russian Federation of Cooperation, where she thanked the Russian authorities and said that between Russia and Ukraine there are "great relations that no one will spoil".

Personal life

Her first husband was half-Swedish. The couple met and married in Tallinn during the student holidays. They divorced a year and a half later. Her second husband was the composer Myroslav Skoryk. At the time of their acquaintance he was studying at a graduate school with Dmitry Kabalevsky in Moscow. She met, becoming the first performer of his song "Don't trample the lily of the valley" on the Union television program "Blue Light". They have a child.