OBITUARY: Dr. Bohdan Struminski, linguist and translator, 68 (07/26/98)

OBITUARY: Dr. Bohdan Struminski, linguist and translator, 68

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj

TORONTO - Dr. Bohdan Struminski, a Harvard-based scholar and translator, died at his home in Arlington, Mass., on June 23 after a long struggle against cancer. He was 68.

Born on March 7, 1930, in Bialystok, Poland, Dr. Struminski studied Ukrainian and Polish philology at the University of Warsaw. He was arrested in 1963 for disseminating protests against Soviet Russification policies in Ukraine and incarcerated in Polish prisons for almost three years.

Upon his release, he resumed his scholarly career, defending a doctoral dissertation in historical philology in 1974. The following year, Dr. Struminski emigrated to the U.S., and accepted the post of visiting lecturer in Ukrainian philology at Harvard University's Slavic department, at which he served until 1979.

From 1979 to 1993, Dr. Struminski was a research associate of Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute. He taught at the university's extension and summer schools as well as at Yale University, and was a visiting examiner at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and the University of Ottawa. In 1993, Warsaw University awarded the Polish expatriate a habilitation Ph.D. for his outstanding contributions to the field of Ukrainian philology.

Dr. Struminski was a specialist in Ukrainian, Polish and Old Slavic historical linguistics, authoring two books, "Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus'" (1996), and "Pseudo Melesko: A Ukrainian Apocryphal Parliamentary Speech of 1615-1618" (1984). He also served as editor-in-chief of a two-volume encyclopedic work on the Lemko region, "Lemkivschyna: Zemlia, Liudy, Istoria, Kultura" (The Lemko Region: The Land, People, History and Culture, 1988), and worked as a special consultant to the five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine, contributing numerous entries on linguistics.

Dr. Struminski wrote over 100 articles in his specialty, which appeared in periodicals such as Slavia Orientalis, the Slavic Review, Harvard Ukrainian Studies and the Journal of Ukrainian Studies.

As a translator, his magnum opus was the rendering into English for the Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, the longest work of Ukrainian polemical literature, Zakharii Kopystensky's "Palinodia," as well as the Polish-language work of his antagonist, Lev Krevza. These appeared together in 1995 as a 1,165-page edition with a foreword, comprehensive source list and annotations prepared by Dr. Struminski.

He also translated "The Captive Mind," the seminal work of Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, into Ukrainian.

In 1993, Dr. Struminski joined the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Hrushevsky Translation Project, preparing English versions of Volumes 3 and 7 and translating Old Church Slavonic, Latin, Middle Ukrainian and Polish texts for many of the other volumes in progress, making significant contributions to the finished version of Volume 1, which appeared in print in 1997. He also served as the project's consultant on various philological questions, and was working on Volume 9, Part 1, when he died.

Ever the scholar engagé, Dr. Struminski channeled his abiding interest in contemporary political issues into contributions to the Ukrainian journal Suchasnist (to which he submitted political and satirical essays under the pseudonym D. Baiursky) and the Paris-based Polish journal Kultura (under the pseudonym A. Skiwski). He also edited Zycie Polonii, an organ of the Eastern Massachussetts wing of the Polish American Congress; served as the managing editor of the Polish bilingual publication 2B; and produced the underground humor review Alzo.

Dr. Struminski was a member of the Boston Support Group for Solidarity during the period of martial law in Poland. He was a vociferous critic of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and lent his polemical efforts to the Chechen cause following Russia's armed intervention in the area in the 1990s. Dr. Struminski had just completed a monograph on the Chechen issue prior to his death.

Dr. Struminski is survived by his wife, Kathleen M. Lestition, of Arlington, Mass., and son, Igor Struminski, of Warsaw. A memorial service was conducted on June 27 at the Our Lady of Czechostowa Church in Dorchester, Mass., and his remains were sent to Warsaw for interment.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, 241 Neponset St., Dorchester, MA 02122, or to the Jacyk Center for Historical Research, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 352 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E8.