Turning the pages back... September 23, 1886 (09/21/97)

Turning the pages back...

September 23, 1886

Pavlo Zaitsev's name is synonymous with studies of the life and works of Ukraine's bard, Taras Shevchenko, thanks to his excellent biography of the poet-painter and his efforts to produce a comprehensive collection of the man's literary output. Few know, however, of his important role in establishing educational policy in the short-lived revival of Ukrainian statehood in 1917-1920.

Born on September 23, 1886, in Sumy, he attended a local gymnasium before departing to the imperial capital, St. Petersburg to pursue an education in law (graduating from the city's eponymous university in 1908) and Slavic languages and literatures (1913).

Zaitsev then remained in St. Petersburg for three years, working as a high school teacher (he also conducted illegal classes on Ukrainian literature on the campus of his alma mater), researching Shevchenko's life and plunging into the revolutionary ferment of the times by joining the Society of Ukrainian Progressives.

In 1917, he moved to Kyiv and became a member of the Central Rada, heading the chancery of the General Secretariat of Education for Ukraine. In 1918, after the coup led by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, he remained in a senior capacity of that administration's ministry of education and Art. When Symon Petliura brought the Ukrainian National Repuglic government back to power, he was appointed head of the cultural-educational department.

These four years also saw him at the posts of lecturer at the Ukrainian Scientific Pedagogical Academy (1917), editor of the quarterly Nashe Mynule (1918-1919), chief editor of the Drukar publishing house, editor of the historical-philological journalAll-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and a governing council member of the Ukrainian Scientific Society.

In 1921, Zaitsev moved to Warsaw, where he remained until 1941, was a regular contributor to the de-facto official organ of the UNR in Poland, worked as a lecturer in philology at Warsaw University, and was an associate of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute (USI).

It was under the auspices of this institute that Zaitsev's focus on Shevchenkiana went into overdrive. He had been a recognized authority in the field of Shevchenko studies since 1913, and edited the St. Petersburg edition of the "Kobzar" published in 1914. In the 1930s, drawing on the many of Shevchenko's unpublished works he had found in previous decades, he headed the production of a "canonical" 13-volume collection of Shevchenko's works, including some Russian prose and verse translated into Ukrainian.

According to literary historian Prof. George S.N. Luckyj, for decades following the revolution that toppled the Russian monarchy, no new biography of Shevchenko had been written. Prof. Luckyj notes the reason: "the Soviet regime had great difficulty interpreting Shevchenko's life and work according to a new ideology. The so-called struggle for Shevchenko began, and lasted well into the late 1930s."

However, still no biography appeared until the USI undertook to publish Shevchenko's collected works under Zaitsev's editorship. The first volume of this edition was to be the long-awaited new study. He finished writing it, and it was even typeset, but the year was less than auspicious: 1939, the year Hitler and Stalin partitioned Eastern Europe.

At first the book didn't appear because of an immediate ban placed on it by Soviet authorities, but Zaitsev saved the proofs, taking them with him to Germany in 1941.

After the war, Zaitsev was in Munich, helping to establish the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, serving as director of its Shevchenko Studies Institute, and as a professor at the Ukrainian Free University.

It was here that he finally completed revisions of his seminal biography of Shevchenko, "Zhyttia Tarasa Shevchenka." It was published in 1955. Zaitsev died 10 years later, on September 2, in Munich.

Sources: "Zaitsev, Pavlo," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); "Zaitsev, Pavlo," Ukrainska Literaturna Entsyklopediia, Vol. 2 (Kyiv: Ukrainska Radianska Entsyklopedia, 1990); "Taras Shevchenko: A Life," Pavlo Zaitsev, translated and edited by George S.N. Luckyj (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).

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