BOOK NOTES

Harvard release on Kistiakovsky focuses on national rights struggle

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute is scheduled to release on October 15 the latest addition to its Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, "Kistiakovsky: The Struggle of National and Constitutional Rights in the Last Years of Tsarism" by Susan Heuman, associate professor of history at Manhattanville College.

As Prof. Heuman writes in her introduction "Transforming the study of Kistiakovsky's life and work into a book has taken many years. When I first worked on the subject of his life in Germany, Russia and Ukraine, there was little interest in a turn-of-the-century liberal who advocated national rights, constitutionalism and human rights. This was before the era of Gorbachev and perestroika, when revolutionary ideas were still in vogue and issues of national autonomy had not yet reached the consciousness of most historians specializing in the region."

Bogdan Kistiakovsky (1868-1920) was one of three sons of a prominent Ukrainian family and was raised among the Kyiv intellectual elite of the late 19th century. This environment along with the work of his father, a respected legal scholar, influenced and shaped Kistiakovsky's lifelong commitment to individual rights, constitutionalism and federalism, a philosophical and political commitment at odds with both the waning power of the despotic Russian monarchy and the beginning of Lenin's vanguard party that would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marginalized as a liberal, bourgeois theorist in Soviet historiography, Kistiakovsky was an articulate advocate of a Ukrainian national rights, as well as a society based on rule of law.

The 218-page book is being distributed by Harvard University Press for $18.00, paperback; $32.95 cloth. All applicable taxes and shipping and handling charges are extra. To order, contact: Simone Alpen at telephone, (617) 496-6269; fax, (617) 496-2550; e-mail, simone_alpen@harvard.edu or visit the university press web site at http://www.hup.harvard.edu.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 4, 1998, No. 40, Vol. LXVI

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