Prof. Jaroslaw Pelenski honored at Columbia University (10/10/04)

Prof. Jaroslaw Pelenski honored at Columbia University

by Diana Howansky

NEW YORK - The Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia held a reception at the university's Faculty House for Prof. Jaroslaw Pelenski on September 17, celebrating his life's work as an historian of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. A festschrift with approximately 60 essays and articles contributed by his colleagues and students was presented to Prof. Pelenski on this occasion. The event drew faculty and students from Columbia, scholars from other universities and academic institutions, and guests from the local community.

Dr. Mark von Hagen, professor of history at Columbia and president of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies, opened the reception with a preface about Prof. Pelenski's diverse background. Prof. Pelenski, who was born of Ukrainian ancestry in Warsaw, Poland, on April 12, 1929, and fled with his family to the West during World War II, received his first doctorate from Munich Ludwig Maximilian University in 1957. His dissertation on Ukrainian national thought was one of the first studies of historian Viacheslav Lypynsky and remains an important contribution to Ukrainian intellectual history.

Prof. Pelenski then moved to the United States, where he taught at King's College in Pennsylvania, before earning a second doctoral degree in history from Columbia in 1968. His Columbia dissertation, published in 1974 by Mouton (Paris and the Hague) under the title "Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438-1560s)," is a key study on political and ideological aims of the Muscovite state during its annexation of neighboring territories.

Noting that Prof. Pelenski settled into a teaching position at the University of Iowa until his retirement in 1998, Prof. von Hagen praised Prof. Pelenski for his scholarly contributions, including helping to publish Pavlo Skoropadsky's memoirs, facilitating dialogue between Ukrainian and Polish intellectuals, and organizing conferences on topics such as Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Jewish relations.

"When I wrote my first piece on Ukrainian history, I advocated a territorial and civic history of Ukraine that took me back to Lypynsky, who of course took me back to Pelenski, who has published more in English and Ukrainian on Lypynsky than any other scholar. When I became fascinated with Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, I learned that Jaroslaw Pelenski was negotiating with Skoropadsky's daughter [Olena] and [the former Party Archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in Kyiv], to publish what became the hetman's 'Spohady,' " Prof. von Hagen said.

Prof. Pelenski also contributed to reviving historical scholarship in post-Soviet Ukraine as president of the W.K. Lypynsky East European Research Institute in Philadelphia, when he established in 1992 the East European Research Institute (now European Research Institute) at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine. This institute has already sponsored important conferences and volumes in Ukraine, and for his achievements and contributions, Prof. Pelenski has been honored as one of the first foreign members of the National Academy.

"In sum, Prof. Pelenski's career illustrates the best values that I believe Columbia stands for in its faculty and students: a prolific scholarly legacy held in high repute while working simultaneously as a scholar-diplomat to foster international contacts between countries in various stages of intellectual liberation during the Soviet period, especially Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and Russia. He has tried to steer both those important contacts and his scholarship away from the damaging stereotypes and caricatures that have often reigned because of ignorance on one side or the other. He has defended his sometimes controversial views in honest intellectual debate with not always well-intentioned or well-informed colleagues. And he has prevailed almost everywhere," Prof. von Hagen said.

The keynote speaker at the reception, Prof. Janusz Duzinkiewicz, a former student of Prof. Pelenski and now associate professor of history at Purdue University, also praised his mentor for work in four areas: the legacy of the Kyivan State, Polish-Ukrainian relations, Russian imperialism and nation-building.

"Not only has he helped me in pursuing a worthwhile life but he has been an engaged scholar with a fresh view of Russian imperialism and the historical struggle of Islam and Orthodoxy, an intellectual who appreciates the Kyivan heritage and Polish influences in Ukraine and a champion of the Ukrainian state school of historiography. Pelenski is uncompromisingly honest in his work. His voice furthers the creative tension of scholarly discussion. His critical publication of primary sources and his tireless organizational efforts help to make rich discussion possible," Prof. Duzinkiewicz said.

Additionally, Prof. Duzinkiewicz presented Prof. Pelenski with the recently published festschrift volume, "States, Societies, Cultures: East and West: Essays in Honor of Jaroslaw Pelenski" (New York, 2004, 1,288 pp.), of which he served as editor-in-chief.

"This festschrift, in a predictable way, reflects Pelenski's interests and the course of his career and life in general," said Prof. Duzinkiewicz, noting the use of numerous languages - English, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and German - and the variety of topics reflect patterns in the life and work of Prof. Pelenski, to whom they are dedicated.

Numerous participants of the reception also offered testimonials expressing their appreciation of Prof. Pelenski's work, including Profs. Istvan Deak (Columbia University), Yaroslav Hrytsak (Lviv National University), Myroslava Znayenko (Rutgers University) and Dr. Larissa Onyshkevych (Shevchenko Scientific Society).

Finally, Prof. Pelenski thanked all the speakers and invited guests, as well as co-sponsoring institutions of the reception.

This event was the first in a series that will take place at Columbia this year to highlight Ukrainian studies. Co-sponsoring the event along with the Ukrainian Studies Program were the Harriman Institute, department of history of Columbia University, European Research Institute at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, W. K. Lypynsky East European Research Institute, Shevchenko Scientific Society and Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.A.

"States, Societies, Cultures: East and West: Essays in Honor of Jaroslaw Pelenski" (ISBN 0-88354-181-5) may be obtained through Ross Publishing Inc. at (212) 765-8200 or Norman@rosspub.com.

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Following are excerpts from the keynote speech of Janusz Duzinkiewicz delivered at a Columbia University reception in honor of Prof. Jaroslaw Pelenski.

Pelenski has also been fascinated with the legacy of Kyivan Rus.' He has argued that the most direct link between Kyivan Rus' and a modern nation has been and still is with Ukraine. Moscow is the younger daughter of Kyiv, with Ukraine having a roughly two-thirds share of the Kyivan heritage. This conclusion has antagonized some mainstream scholarship with its largely unconscious Russocentrism and has stimulated controversy essential to a healthy biosphere of ideas. It continues the longstanding debate between northerners and southerners. I am struck by how the intellectual marketplace assumes that the Russians are objective while Ukrainians are nationalistic. But this ferment of ideas has had a positive effect. It has moved scholarship ahead. As a small sign that the discussion is moving the center, textbooks are more frequently avoiding the anachronistic term, Kyivan Russia in favor of Kievan Rus'. ...

Pelenski's insights on Polish influences in Ukraine are connected with his interest in Viacheslav Lypynsky. Lypynsky identified the core of Ukrainian differences from Russia as a difference in the relationship "between those who rule and those who are ruled." The relationship in the Ukrainian case is between an elite and an emerging civil society whereas in Muscovy or Russia the state is free from constraint and society behaves as a more passive object of state centralism. In broader Ukrainian historiography, this essential distinction extends back to Kyivan Rus'. It coincides with other developments in the primordial ocean of Western state-and-nation building, and was strengthened in the political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This has tremendous relevance today and is an insight at the heart of Pelenski's scholarship.

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