Shevchenko Society conference features scholarly lectures and book presentations (03/31/02)

Shevchenko Society conference features scholarly lectures and book presentations

by Dr. Orest Popovych

NEW YORK - The 22nd annual scholarly conference dedicated to Taras Shevchenko was hosted by the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America (NTSh) in its building in New York City on March 10. The program was co-hosted by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. (UVAN), the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) and the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. It was chaired by Dr. Anna Procyk, a vice-president of NTSh.

In her opening remarks Dr. Larissa Zaleska Onyshkevych, president of NTSh, credited the tradition of the Shevchenko conferences to the initiatives of the late NTSh President Dr. Jaroslaw Padoch and his collaboration with Dr. George Grabowicz of HURI, which was then headed by Prof. Omeljan Pritsak. According to Dr. Onyshkevych, this year's scholarly lectures, complemented by the presentation of two new NTSh publications devoted to the works of Shevchenko, are evidence of the apparently inexhaustible legacy of the society's patron.

The capacity audience was addressed briefly by Natalia Martynenko, a vice-consul of the Consulate General of Ukraine, who noted that a multi-volume set of the works of Shevchenko was published recently in Kyiv.

Dr. Oleh Ilnytzkyj, a professor of Ukrainian literature at the University of Alberta, presented a lecture titled "The Word 'Zhyd' in the works of Shevchenko." Although "zhyd" is a neutral term for "Jew" in traditional Ukrainian (as well as in Polish and most Slavic languages), it happens to be an offensive term in Russian.

One of the myriad examples of the Russification of the Ukrainian language in the Soviet era was the compulsory replacement of the word "zhyd" by the Russian "yevrey," which Shevchenko had never used. As a result, there have been critics, who in their ignorance of history and linguistics, have tried to pin anti-Semitism on Shevchenko because of his usage of "zhyd" and its derivatives. Such allegations are groundless on the basis of linguistics alone. However, Dr. Ilnytzkyj also pointed out that Shevchenko was known to protest in writing against anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire.

"Shevchenko and Post-Colonialism" was the topic explored by Prof. Vitaly Chernetsky of the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. He said the term "post-colonial" is being applied by many to today's independent Ukraine. Colonialism can manifest itself not just by racial discrimination against the subjugated majority or ethnic group, but also by the relegation of the latter to a second-class status in its own country, impeding its upward mobility and denationalizing its elites. What is important for a post-colonial society, said Prof. Chernetsky, is to regain its national dignity and culture. These goals were promoted by Shevchenko, the first Ukrainian national intellectual who managed to define Ukrainians as a national entity - an idea without precedence at the time. This is why Shevchenko's legacy is so relevant today and deserving study in a multidisciplinary approach, concluded Prof. Chernetsky.

Prof. Grabowicz of HURI spoke on "The Current State of Scholarly Research on Shevchenko: Some Thoughts on the Subject of Recent Publications and Presentations." Although a multitude of new publications have appeared recently on Shevchenko, there is a dearth of works of high quality. While not entirely devoid of value or interest, many of the publications are amateurish and para-scholarly, even anti-scholarly, according to Dr. Grabowicz.

A highlight of the conference was the presentation of two quality books on Shevchenko published by NTSh in 2001 (in Ukrainian). They are: "The Worlds of Taras Shevchenko," Vol. 2, a collection of articles edited by Dr. Onyshkevych, Prof. Assya Humesky and Dr. John Fizer, and "The Concordance to the Poetic Works of Taras Shevchenko," compiled by Oleh Ilnytzkyj and George Hawrysch. The Concordance is an alphabetical index of all the words used in Shevchenko's poetry, listed in a context comprising three lines of text: the line in which the word appears as well as the preceding and succeeding one. The present work is the first ever concordance in the Ukrainian literature. It was published jointly by the NTSh and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

Some worrisome closing thoughts were shared by Dr. Olexa Bilaniuk, UVAN president, who traced the history of the struggle of the Ukrainian language for survival in the face of the imperialist Russian onslaught. Realizing that "the word is mightier than the sword," said Dr. Bilaniuk, tsarist Russia in the 19th century banned the Ukrainian language both from print and public speech. After a brief rebirth in the 1920s, the Ukrainian language fell victim to a new wave of compulsory Russification beginning in the early 1930s when, among other measures, some 40,000 Ukrainian terms were specifically excluded from usage by Moscow's edict. Russification reached its peak in the Brezhnev era, when the unconcealed policy of the Soviet regime was to mold all Soviet peoples into one Russian-speaking nation.

"We all had expected," said Dr. Bilaniuk, that upon gaining national independence Ukraine would restore its original language and orthography but, sadly, this has not happened. A project of the Orthography Commission of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine which proposed a partial de-Russification of the Ukrainian orthography has just been canceled by Ukraine's government and the commission itself, was suddenly disbanded.

Thus, the struggle for the Ukrainian language has gone a full cycle. Dr. Bilaniuk tried to end on a positive note, expressing the hope that the words of Taras Shevchenko will help preserve the Ukrainian language after all.

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