Dr. Oleksander Pavliuk: John Kolasky Memorial Fellow for 2000/2001 (04/29/01)

Dr. Oleksander Pavliuk: John Kolasky Memorial Fellow for 2000/2001

by Yuri Shevchuk

EDMONTON - This year's recipient of the John Kolasky Memorial Fellowship, awarded annually by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, is Dr. Oleksander Pavliuk, a historian from Kyiv.

Dr. Pavliuk graduated from Kyiv's Taras Shevchenko State University with an M.A. in international relations and international law (1985). In 1987-1990 he taught history of Ukraine at Manuilsky State Pedagogical Institute in Rivne.

In 1990-1993 he was a Ph.D. student at the Ukrainian Institute of International Relations at Kyiv State University and in 1993 he defended his Ph.D. dissertation in history titled "Eastern Galicia in European Politics, 1918-1919." Primary sources of his doctoral research were relatively unknown and little studied archival documents in Ukraine, Canada, the United States and Italy pertaining to the foreign policies of the Western Ukrainian National Republic and the political activities of its leaders.

Dr. Pavliuk became one of the first researchers to systematically study the archives of the government-in-exile of the Western Ukrainian National Republic. By his own accounts, these archives alone consist of 543 boxes of documents that are kept at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome.

Upon completing his doctoral program he taught courses on the foundations of political science, the history of 20th century Ukraine, European civilization and the history of international relations at the National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. At the same time he continued his scholarly research.

In addition to continuing his work in the history of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dr. Pavliuk became increasingly interested in contemporary international policies of Ukraine, especially problems of international security. In 1997 he became the director of the Kyiv office of the EastWest Institute, which is based in New York.

Dr. Pavliuk is the author of the monograph "Ukraine's Struggle for Independence and U.S. Policy, 1917-1923 ("Borotba Ukrainy za Nezalezhnist i Polityka SShA, 1917-23 rr."), as well as more than 40 other scholarly publications, including articles in such influential magazines as Foreign Affairs and Security Dialogue.

His most recent book (published in 2000) is the collection of articles "Building Security in the New States of Eurasia; Sub-Regional Cooperation of the Former Soviet States," which he edited. This volume and other publications pertaining to contemporary Ukraine have established Dr. Pavliuk as a leading expert on issues of European and regional security in Ukraine.

While on his fellowship, Dr. Pavliuk has continued working on questions related to the foreign policy of Ukraine, such as its relations with neighboring countries, Ukraine's role in regional politics of the Black Sea area and Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine's relations with the West, and its participation in European and Euro-Atlantic integration.

Dr. Pavliuk's scholarly contacts with his colleagues in Canada began in 1991; Canada was the first Western country he visited as a scholar. Thanks to the Neporany Fellowship awarded by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, he was able to spend four months doing research in Edmonton at the University of Alberta's Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and later in Ottawa, Winnipeg and Calgary, and finally in the archives of the Western Ukrainian National Republic at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome.

Dr. Pavliuk's current stay in Canada has several aspects: continuing research on the foreign policies of independent Ukrainian governments in 1917-1923 and on how international factors contributed to the defeat of Ukraine's struggle for independence. (His study will make comparisons to the successes of such neighboring nations as the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and the Balts.) He also is working on studying Ukraine's relations with the West during the past decade of independence.

During his stay in Toronto as the John Kolasky Memorial Fellow, Dr. Pavliuk completed a voluminous 100-page chapter titled "The Diplomacy of Independent Ukrainian Governments, 1917-1923," which will become part of a large collective monograph on the history of Ukrainian diplomacy due to be published this spring by the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. This study will become the first scholarly publication on the history of Ukrainian foreign policy and diplomacy. Dr. Pavliuk is also working on his second monograph on the international aspects of Ukraine's struggle for national liberation in 1917-1923.

While in Canada, Dr. Pavliuk also plans to prepare several articles on Ukraine's current relations with the West, including on the policies of the United States and the European Union towards Ukraine and their impact on the internal transformations taking place in Ukraine today, as well as its geopolitical situation.

Dr. Pavliuk has made presentations in Toronto and other cities of Canada and the United States. He presented the paper "Transformations in Ukraine and its Relations with the European Union" at a seminar sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He also gave a talk to students of the Russian and East-European Studies Center of the University of Toronto and at the Kennan Institute in Washington on "Ukraine's Regional Policies within GUUAM." In Edmonton he spoke at a CIUS-sponsored seminar on "Ukraine's Search for Regional Stability" on March 7 and the following day delivered the 35th annual Shevchenko Lecture on "A Challenging Decade: Ukraine and the West, 1991-2001." He then went on to Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, where he gave talks on the same topics.

He is scheduled to speak in London, Ontario, at the University of Western Ontario on "International Aspects of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1923" and later at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and in Potsdam, Germany, at the International Conference on the Creation of a New System of European Security on "Relations Between Ukraine and the European Union."

In addition to his duties as the director of the EastWest Institute's Kyiv Center, Dr. Pavliuk is a member of the advisory board of the Kennan Institute in Washington, and of the Scholarly Consultative Council to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

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