Wednesday, November 8th, 2017 Challenging the Establishment: Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Lviv, and the Writing of Volume 4 of the History of Ukraine-Rus’

Description

This talk will explore the political and cultural battles fought by Mykhailo Hrushevsky from his appointment to the chair of Ukrainian history in Lviv in 1894 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. In these years he fought battles of varying degrees of intenstity against various establishments: the Austrian government in Vienna; the Polish authorities in Lviv; the Polish-dominated University of Lviv, and the Polish cultural and historical establishments in Galicia and beyond its borders. He also played a central role in transforming the Ukrainian cultural establishment in Galicia, sometimes in conflict with its leaders; sometimes in collaboration with them. Against this background of struggle, and the worsening state of Polish-Ukrainian relations in Galicia, Hrushevsky conceived and wrote volume 4, in the years between 1901 and 1907. It covers the period of Polish-Lithuanian rule of Ukraine, from the collapse of the principality of Galicia-Volhynia in 1340 to the 1569 Union of Lublin, when Ukraine was incorporated into the kingdom of Poland. Volume 4 was written when the young Hrushevsky was at the height of his powers as a historian and was unconstrained by the censorship which limited what he could write in the Soviet years. The talk will explore the connection between his political, social, and cultural activities after 1894 and his radical reconceptualization of the relationship between Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland in the years in which the Polish-Lithuanian union was formed. It will suggest that Volume 4 contains some of Hrushevsky’s finest writing on political history.

The session will be chaired by Professor Piotr Wróbel, University of Toronto. Professor Frank Sysyn, University of Alberta, will serve as a discussant. The session will include a presentation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, Vol.4 Political Relations in the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, translated by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj. Ed. Robert Frost, Yaroslav Fedoruk, and Frank E. Sysyn with the assistance of Myroslav Yurkevich (Edmonton-Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2017). The publication is a project of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. Volume 4 was sponsored by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.