Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Publications – serie

Born in Poltava in 1722, Paisij Velyčkovs’kyj attended the Kievan Mohyla Academy. After four years, he renounced secular studies to become a monk. He lived in various monasteries in the Ukraine (including the Kievan Caves Monastery), on Mt. Athos, and in Moldavia and Wallachia, where he died in 1794. In or about 1748 a Moldavo-Slavic brotherhood began to gather about Velyčkovs’kyj and to revive the Hesychast traditions of the “cult of the elder” (starecestvo) and the Jesus prayer.Throughout his life Velyčkovs’kyj avidly collected and translated Byzantine texts into Church Slavonic, especially works pertaining to Hesychasm. This volume contains the first English translation of Velyčkovs’kyj’s unfinished autobiography, as well as a biography of the elder by his disciple Mytrofan. Anthony-Emil Tachiaos’s introduction discusses both works against their historical and generic background. Included are a map, an annotated index, and an index of Biblical citations.

The work of Alexander A. Potebnja, a leading Ukrainian linguist of the nineteenth century, has significantly influenced modern literary criticism, particularly Russian formalism and structuralism. Potebnja's theory, known as potebnjanstvo (Potebnjanism), flourished in the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. It attracted scores of adherents and gave rise to an influential literary journal and a formal critical school at Kharkiv. Yet despite his remarkable achievements in linguistics and literary theory, Potebnja's work was officially renounced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and in the West he remains virtually unknown.In his study, John Fizer carefully reconstructs Potebnja's theory of literature from the psycholinguistic formulations found in his works on language, mythology, and folklore. Elaborating Potebnja's concept of internal form, energeia, polysemy, and the semiosis of poetic discourse, Fizer develops the central tenets of Potebnja's theory with regard to their philosophical, psychological, and linguistic bases. Largely influenced by Kant and by Humboldt's philosophy of language, Potebnja conceived of language and the verbal arts as coterminous phenomena. He identified the internal form with the etymon of the word, which he considered the preeminent locus in the structure of poetic art. He insisted on the dynamic role of the Self in poetic creation and perception but, unlike many of his contemporaries, he believed that the diachronic depth of the signifiers was ethnic and had measureable limits. According to Potebnja, this depth (or internal form) reveals itself as a semantically multivalent image that induces self-knowledge and transforms the primary data of consciousness into syntagmatic wholes.A great deal of Potebnja's theory shares similarities with the work of Benedetto Croce, Leo Spitzer, and Charles S. Pierce. It anticipated modern literary criticism, and, as the author convincingly argues, retains existential and epistemological cogency even today. Fizer's volume offers the first thorough study of Potebnja's literary theory, and his insightful analysis restores Potebnja to his rightful place in the history of literary criticism.

In the first in-depth exploration of the relationship between Jews and magnates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, M. J. Rosman shows the influence of the Jews on economic, social, and political life in the Polish, Ukrainian, and Belorussian territories, and offers new perspectives on their relations with magnates. Rosman focuses on two major questions: What were the principal spheres of interaction between the Jews and the nobility? What was the significance of this interaction for both parties?By analyzing the Sieniawski-Czartoryski estates the author demonstrates the measure of cooperation that existed between magnates and Jews. Jews guaranteed the viability of important economic institutions and provided commercial services, while magnates furnished an environment for Jews to conduct their religious and commercial activities. Drawing on Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish sources and literature from archives and libraries in Poland, Israel, and the United States, Rosman provides a richly detailed account of the socioeconomic development of early modern Europe’s largest Jewish community.

Meletij Smotryc´kyj viewed his Homilary Gospel (Jevanhelije učytelnoje, Vievis, 1616) as a crucial requirement for the “spiritual good” of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian-Belorussian) nation. In light of the fierce debate over the Union of Brest (1596) he saw the need for an Orthodox collection of Gospel pericopes and sermons in the vernacular to supplant reliance on Polish Catholic and Protestant postils. Thus, he translated into Ruthenian a Church Slavonic collection of sermons on the Gospels, while simultaneously introducing formal revisions that allowed the work to compete more successfully with similar Polish texts.As a result, the Homilary Gospel is important as a critical polemical text from the Catholic–Orthodox debate and also as a monument of early Ukrainian literature. This volume reproduces in facsimile the original printed edition along with three different versions of the Preface written by Smotryc´kyj. The Introduction sets the work in its literary and religious contexts and discusses Smotryc´kyj’s methods of translation and adaptation.

The first half of the twentieth century was in many respects crucial for the evolution and character of Modern Standard Ukrainian. Prior to World War I, the Ukraine was divided between the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian Empires. The standard language lacked uniformity even though the primacy of the standard established in Russian-dominated Ukraine was theoretically accepted in Austrian-ruled Galicia and Bukovina. Up to 1905 the tsarist government forbade the public use of Ukrainian beyond belles-lettres, and excluded it from education until 1917. In the interwar period the country was divided among the USSR, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, and social and cultural conditions differed drastically.George Shevelov’s book, based on extensive study of factual material, traces the development of Modern Standard Ukrainian in relation to the political, legal, and cultural conditions within each region. It examines the relation of the standard language to the underlying dialects, the ways in which the standard language was enriched, and the complex struggle for the unity of the language and sometimes for its very existence. While shunning excess linguistic terminology, the book presents the essentials of linguistic development in connection with broad political and cultural conditions.

This volume contains the papers presented at the Third Quinquennial Conference on Ukrainian Economics, held at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, in 1985. The first two conferences and their proceedings were devoted to the Ukraine’s current economic conditions and to selected contributions of its scholars to economics. The present proceedings contain fourteen previously unpublished essays dealing with the one thousand years of Ukrainian economic history prior to the outbreak of the First World War.The contributions are divided chronologically into three parts, covering the periods of Kievan Rus’, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the nineteenth century. They are not intended to give a comprehensive survey of Ukrainian economic history, but primarily to deal with important economic issues of particular periods. The problem of the orientation of the Kievan Principality with regard to the Nomadic East and the Byzantine South is discussed in the first part. The authors of the volume’s second part analyze the economic ties of the Ukrainian economy during the rise and fall of Cossackdom and, subsequently, the Hetman State, with the West and Muscovy. The contributions in the third part deal with the important problems of economic development during the Ukraine’s rebirth as a modern nation in the past century. Issues discussed include: population change, industrialization, relations with the Russian Empire’s metropolis, urbanization, and the development of the southern and western (within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) regions. Finally, the introductory essay offers a proposal for a periodization scheme of Ukrainian economic history.

Odessa, one of the world's unique cities, was founded by Empress Catherine II in 1794 on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Settled close to the fertile Ukrainian steppe, Odessa soon became the Russian Empire's chief exporter of cereals to western Europe. Attracted by trade and the liberal policies of its early governors, Greeks, Italians, Jews, French, Armenians, and other nationalities immigrated to the city and the surrounding countryside. By the late nineteenth century Odessa was the most polyglot and cosmopolitan city in the empire. In the first decades of the twentieth century, however, strikes, revolutionary agitation, and pogroms brought about the city's decline.In this book Patricia Herlihy contrasts Odessa's rapid development during the nineteenth century with the growing tension within its society up to the First World War. Besides Ukrainian and Russian sources, she makes use of travel literature and consular reports, which offer an especially lively portrait of this bustling and turbulent port. The book is an important contribution not only to Ukrainian and Russian history, but also to the history of agricultural settlement, international commerce, urban expansion, and social life within a large and variegated nineteenth-century community.

The present volume contains papers presented at the Fourth Quinquennial Conference on Ukrainian Economics at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University in September 1990. Contributions by Tetiana Pakhomova and Serhii Mischenko and four discussants have been added in order to round out the collection.The volume from the previous quinquennial conference dealt with Ukrainian economic history prior to World War I. The present collection deals with the Ukrainian economy during the late twentieth century—a period of epochal change. The papers are divided into five sections: Framework; Resources; Performance; Welfare; and External Relations. A recurrent theme centers on the nature of Ukrainian–Soviet economic relations in the past, whether this relationship was exploitative, and, if so, to what degree. Each author reviews economic trends in Ukraine to the end of 1990, and analyzes the potential for future Ukrainian economic policy and development. The analyses are supported by a large amount of statistical information, presented in eighty tables. Four maps help orient the reader with Ukrainian geography.The contributors are from the U.S., Canada, England, and the Ukraine; they represent various schools of economic thought and employ different methodologies. The discussion papers at the end of each section facilitate the synthesis of the material in the papers and introduce an element of scholarly discussion on issues that presently are of vital importance to Ukraine. Because of the wide range of topics and extensive source material, this collection will be useful not only to specialists, but also to students and others interested in Ukraine today.

In 1903 Bogdan Kistiakovsky railed against Lenin's concept of a vanguard party to lead the revolution, remarking that he did not want to see the Romanov autocracy replaced with the despotism of Lenin in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat. His charge was wholly consistent with a life (1868–1920) devoted to the development of rule of law in the Russian Empire—a new government based on respect for national minorities, human rights, and constitutional federalism. Susan Heuman's study shows the fresh urgency of Kistiakovsky's ideas as Russia, Ukraine, and the other countries of the former Soviet Union seek to establish precisely those values that Kistiakovsky put forth ninety years ago. Heuman's analysis and portrait of Kistiakovsky will provoke scholars of Russian and Ukrainian intellectual history to reassess early twentieth-century politics and society in the Russian Empire.

This volume contains the papers presented at the Third Quinquennial Conference on Ukrainian Economics, held at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, in 1985. The first two conferences and their proceedings were devoted to the Ukraine’s current economic conditions and to selected contributions of its scholars to economics. The present proceedings contain fourteen previously unpublished essays dealing with the one thousand years of Ukrainian economic history prior to the outbreak of the First World War.The contributions are divided chronologically into three parts, covering the periods of Kievan Rus’, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the nineteenth century. They are not intended to give a comprehensive survey of Ukrainian economic history, but primarily to deal with important economic issues of particular periods. The problem of the orientation of the Kievan Principality with regard to the Nomadic East and the Byzantine South is discussed in the first part. The authors of the volume’s second part analyze the economic ties of the Ukrainian economy during the rise and fall of Cossackdom and, subsequently, the Hetman State, with the West and Muscovy. The contributions in the third part deal with the important problems of economic development during the Ukraine’s rebirth as a modern nation in the past century. Issues discussed include: population change, industrialization, relations with the Russian Empire’s metropolis, urbanization, and the development of the southern and western (within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) regions. Finally, the introductory essay offers a proposal for a periodization scheme of Ukrainian economic history.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II have brought attention to the displaced cultural and archival heritage of many nations. The situation of Ukraine provides a striking example of the many international problems involved in questions of restitution. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted considers (among many topics) the problems of defining the archival heritage of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia; international precedents for post-imperial archival devolutions and postwar restitution; intentional Soviet archival destruction in 1941; the Ukrainian component of Soviet library and archival trophies in Moscow and Kyiv; Russia’s bitterly disputed 1998 law nationalizing cultural trophies; and post-1991 Ukrainian restitution policies.Containing significant new revelations about cultural treasures previously thought lost, Trophies of War and Empire will be of interest to all those interested in the contemporary rebuilding of cultural and intellectual institutions in Eastern Europe.

Above and Beyond is the first book to appear in the West by a major Ukrainian independence figure and is the first by a former Soviet general to discuss the inner workings of the USSR's military. Morozov provides behind-the-scenes insights on Yeltsin, Kuchma, Dudaev, and other important players still active today. His book will firmly alter our perception of the USSR and its demise, the Soviet military machine, and the rise of modern, independent Ukraine.In September 1991 Major General Kostiantyn Morozov informed the Soviet Armed Forces Command that he was no longer a Soviet general, but the new Ukrainian Minister of Defense. He then set out to create the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF), mounting a brilliant campaign to remove from Ukraine military personnel who were not Ukrainian citizens and not loyal to the new Ukrainian state, taking over the Ukrainian-based assets, nuclear and otherwise, of the Soviet Army, and firmly grounding the idea of an independent UAF in the public mind. Within a year of assuming his post, he was overseeing the second-largest army in Europe and the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The shock waves of his efforts would eventually lead Vladimir Zhirinovsky to put Morozov at the top of his "hit list" of those responsible for destroying the USSR.Morozov guided his forces through a minefield of intrigues as various figures sought to undermine the UAF and subordinate it to the armed forces of the CIS and, therefore, to Russia. He stood as an important figure in the political landscape for his blunt candor and total devotion to Ukrainian sovereignty. This was especially remarkable because Morozov was ethnically half-Russian (or so he thought), spoke no Ukrainian, and came from the eastern part of Ukraine, long believed to be faithful to Russia and Soviet rule.

Ottoman survey registers are recognized as unparalleled sources on the demographic, economic, and linguistic characteristics of the regions for which they were made. The register for Kamaniçe (the region of Podolia and the city of Kam'janec', which the Ottomans conquered in 1672) is the only surviving survey register of Ukrainian lands. The full text of the defter is given in transcription in the first part, with a facsimile edition given in the second part. All narrative documents are translated in appendices, while narrative segments of the registry portion of the defter are translated in the notes. Commentary includes extensive notes and an introduction. The Ottoman Survey Register of Podolia provides important new information on the Ottomans and their subjects living in Ukrainian territory. Interpretive maps keyed to the register and indices and glossaries are included.

The Old Testament Book of Esther in Slavonic translation is known from East Slavic manuscripts of the late 14th to the late 16th centuries. Working from the Masoretic Hebrew texts and Greek translations, Horace Lunt and Moshe Taube examine textological clues to the circumstances of Esther’s translation, sources, and redactions. This study creates a solid basis from which scholars can now discuss the particulars of this important translation, the nature of East Slavic biblical translating activity, and the relationship of old East Slavic bookmen to Hebrew and Greek.

Oleh Lysheha is considered the "poets' poet" of contemporary Ukraine. A dissident and iconoclast, he was forbidden to publish in the Soviet Union from 1972 to 1988. Since then, his reputation has steadily grown to legendary proportions. His work is informed by transcendentalism and Zen-like introspection, with meditations on the essence of the human experience and man's place in nature. James Brasfield studied poetry and translation with Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott, Daniel Halpern, and other luminaries. He served as an editorial assistant for poetry at The Paris Review, and now teaches English at Pennsylvania State University. The Collected Poems here include facing-page English and Ukrainian versions of selected poems and a play, "Friend Li Po. Brother Tu Fu." It represents a rare example of translations that are as beautiful as the original poetry and poems that anyone interested in the written word will appreciate.

Written in honor of one of the foremost observers of nationalism and culture in Central and Eastern Europe, this volume brings together 35 eminent scholars from the United States, Canada, Ukraine, and Poland.Supplemented by a bibliography of the work of Roman Szporluk, these fresh, urgent essays mirror Szporluk's broad and comparativist approach. Topics range from the rise of Ukrainian national consciousness in Galicia, to nationalism in contemporary Serbia; from the rise of private property in the Russia of Catherine II, to contemporary Russian attitudes toward Ukrainian nation building. Other essays explore the impact of theories of nationalism on the discipline of history and critique Ernest Gellner's "constructivist" theory of the nation.

This controversial and groundbreaking book revisits the origins of one of the most beloved works of East Slavic literature, the Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Igorʹ Tale). Edward Keenan delves into the history of the publication of the Tale and produces a meticulous analysis of its language in order to demonstrate that the text is not an authentic twelfth-century document. Rather, Keenan argues that it is a product of the late eighteenth century, created by the Bohemian scholar Josef Dobrovský. Keenan’s thought-provoking insights into the creation and publication of the Tale will spark scholarly debate for many years.

Written in the early seventeenth century, the Hustynja Chronicle represents the first attempt of early modern chroniclers to write a systematic history of Ukraine. The chronological sweep of the text is ambitious, describing the history of Kyivan Rus´ and Ukraine from biblical times until the Union of Brest in 1596. The text covers many critical periods in Ukrainian history, including pre-Mongol Rus´, the expansion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the emergence of the Cossacks. Its unique style blends the older tradition of presenting information under yearly entries with a newer, more narrative style of chronicle modeled on the works of Polish chroniclers such as Stryjkowski and Bielski.This publication marks the first time that the Hustynja Chronicle has appeared in a scholarly edition. One copy originally found in the Mharsk Monastery serves as the exemplar for the main text and is accompanied by notes representing variants from six other copies of the text. An introduction by Ukrainian historian Dr. Oleksiy Tolochko, in both the original Ukrainian and English translation, provides a detailed description and history of the chronicle. The Hustynja Chronicle is an essential source for scholars interested in medieval and early-modern Ukrainian history, philology, and chronicle writing.

From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, the geopolitical placement of Ukraine drew the attention of some of Europe’s most influential cartographers. Many of these maps, including ones of exceptional rarity, were collected by the Ukrainian scholar and journalist Bohdan Krawciw. Krawciw traced the physical and aesthetic depiction of Ukraine across its changing borders as a means of self-recognition and as a cultural and political history of the contested nation and its peoples. Of special interest are his maps of Ukraine from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the crossroads of four empires: Habsburg, Ottoman, Russian, and Soviet. As part of his personal archive, Krawciw’s maps were bequeathed to Harvard University upon his death in 1975. This book serves as both a catalog of his collection and a description of how the maps he collected serve as an invaluable source for Ukraine’s history and a symbol of Ukrainian national identity. The book contains nearly 100 examples from the collection, many in full color, as well as indices listing maps by cartographer and by place name.

The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus’ as bishops and monastic superiors. The most detailed source for the monastery early history is its Paterik, a thirteenth-century compilation containing stories reaching back to the monastery’s foundation in the mid-eleventh century. Muriel Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik. With an introduction, map, and several appendices, Heppell discusses the work’s Byzantine background and also sets it in its historical context.The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature is one portion of the Harvard Project in Commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus’-Ukraine sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. The Library encompasses literary activity in Rus’-Ukraine from its beginning in the mid-eleventh century through the end of the eighteenth century. Included are ecclesiastical and secular works written in a variety of languages, such as Church Slavonic, Old Rus’, Ruthenian (Middle Ukrainian), Polish, and Latin. This linguistic diversity reflects the cultural pluralism of Ukrainian intellectual life in the medieval and early-modern periods. The Library consists of three parts: Texts, which publishes original works, in facsimile whenever appropriate; English Translations; and Ukrainian Translations. Each volume begins with an introductory essay by a specialist. The two translation series also include maps, appendices, and indices. A cumulative index to the entire Library is planned.

The authors included in this volume—Ilarion, Klim Smoljatic, and Kirill of Turov—are remarkable for both their personal and literary achievements. Appointed in 1051 by Prince Jaroslav the Wise, Ilarion was the first of only two recorded “native” metropolitans of Kiev. His “Sermon on Law and Grace” constitutes the finest piece of eleventh-century Rus’ rhetorical literature. Klim Smoljatic, the second “native” metropolitan of Rus’ (from 1147), is the author of the controversial “Epistle to Foma,” which addresses the debate over the proper nature and limits of Christian learning. Finally, the twelfth-century monk Kirill of Turov is best known for his collection of allegorical lessons and some of the most accomplished sermons of Kievan Rus’. The volume contains the first complete translations of the “Epistle to Foma” and the lessons and sermons of Kirill, as well as an entirely new rendering of the “Sermon on Law and Grace.”Simon Franklin prefaces the texts with a substantial introduction that places each of the three authors in their historical context and examines the literary qualities as well as textual complexities of these outstanding works of Rus’ literature.