The paper deals with the preconditions for the emergence and implementation of the unique encyclopedic project «History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR» in 26 volumes. The urgency of this issue is emphasized, despite the fact that the project had been implemented since 1962 until 1983 years. The author traces how in the postwar period the idea of the multivolume encyclopedic publication (dictionary-reference book) on the history of settlements of Ukraine seized the masses and won more and more supporters. They were not only representatives of the domestic academic socio-humanitarian community, but also broad layers of the population, who as a result of the project became more interested in local history. The author claims that it was the Lviv scientific community (Academician I. Krypiakevych with his subordinates at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Ukr. SSR Academy of Sciences in Lviv) that had taken the first practical steps at the regional level to implement this idea before the relevant resolution was issued in late May 1962. It was in 1959 that they began compiling a historical and geographical dictionary of the Lviv region. The idea was developed in the Kyivan academic community at the level of heads of relevant institutions. Thus, since 1960, the department of auxiliary historical disciplines of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine held special meetings on the formation of the concept of a multi-volume book and developed organizational support for the project. Also in advance, the Archives Department under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR started identifying the relevant materials in the central and regional archives and entering them in the files? As well as developed the relevant methodological materials. The role of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Petro Shelest in the promotion of this idea has been noted. Thus, the role played by the academic historical community of Kyiv ‒ Lviv that in interaction with the Communist Party authorities in the legitimization of the project in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine «On the publication of the History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR» 16/18-z of May 29, 1962 has been found out

«History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR» in 26 volumes, Historical and geographical dictionary of the Ukr. SSR, Ivan Krypiakevych, local history, historical geography