Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky ( ua, Іван Лисяк Рудницький, 27 October 1919 – 25 April 1984) was a
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
of
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
socio-political
Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how ...
thought,
political scientist
Political science is the science, scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of politics, political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated c ...
and
scholar publicist. He significantly influenced Ukrainian historical and political thought by writing over 200 historical essays, commentaries and reviews, and also serving as editor of several book publications. He has been praised one of the most influential Ukrainian historians of the twentieth century. He is sometimes referred to as Ivan Łysiak-Rudnytsky, but the surname he used was his mother’s name Rudnytsky.
Personal background
Ivan Rudnytsky was born in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
,
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
where his parents were residing as political refugees from
Galicia, which had been invaded by Poland in the aftermath of its successful war against the
West Ukrainian People's Republic
The West Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR) or West Ukrainian National Republic (WUNR), known for part of its existence as the Western Oblast of the Ukrainian People's Republic, was a short-lived polity that controlled most of Eastern Gali ...
(1918 – 1919). His father was a lawyer and his mother
Milena Rudnytska
Milena Rudnytska ( uk, Мілена Рудницька: 15 July 1892 – 29 March 1976) was a Ukrainian educator, women's activist, politician and writer. One of the most influential voices in the interwar period of the Galician women's movement l ...
was a professor and politician. Both were well-known social and political activists from well connected families. In his youth, Ivan grew to become an intellectual gourmet growing up within the intensely stimulating environment of the extended Rudnytsky family of luminaries: (prominent political leader and publicist of Ukrainian identity), (literary scholar, literary critic, translator), (conductor and composer) and Volodymyr Rudnytsky (lawyer and social activist). After his parents divorced when Ivan was 2 years old he lived with his mother, but his material needs to support his intellectual pursuits were taken care of up to 1953 in large part due to his father and mother’s financial help.
Intellectual development
Rudnytsky began his academic career at the
University of Lviv
The University of Lviv ( uk, Львівський університет, Lvivskyi universytet; pl, Uniwersytet Lwowski; german: Universität Lemberg, briefly known as the ''Theresianum'' in the early 19th century), presently the Ivan Franko Na ...
in
interwar Poland
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...
where he studied law in the years 1937–1939. After the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
annexation of Galicia, his mother believed it was only a matter of time before the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
would arrest her and so she fled with her son to
Krakow, and then in 1940 to Berlin. There he was awarded his masters degree in international relations in 1943 from the
Friedrich Wilhelm University. Fearing discovery of their Jewish heritage, he fled with his mother to
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
,
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
and continued his studies at
Karl-Ferdinands-Universität
Charles University ( cs, Univerzita Karlova, UK; la, Universitas Carolina; german: Karls-Universität), also known as Charles University in Prague or historically as the University of Prague ( la, Universitas Pragensis, links=no), is the oldest an ...
, receiving his doctorate in History in 1945. His doctoral advisor was the noted scholar of
slavic studies
Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was prim ...
, , who held Rudnytsky’s oral doctoral defence on a Prague street during an air raid prior to Soviet occupation.
Driven by a desire to combat the influence of the Ukrainian nationalists, Rudnytsky became a leading member of several student organizations in the 1940s. He was a member of the Ukrainian student society "Mazepyneć", the Ukrainian Student Group in Prague, and the Nationalist Organization of Ukrainian Students of Greater Germany (together with and
Omeljan Pritsak
Omeljan Yosypovych Pritsak ( uk, Омелян Йосипович Пріцак; 7 April 1919, Luka, Sambir County, West Ukrainian People's Republic – 29 May 2006, Boston) was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvar ...
). He was a briefly a member of a conservative, monarchist hetmanite organization but was expelled in 1940 by the leadership for meeting an old acquaintance of his mother’s who was associated with the
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was a country in Eastern Europe that existed between 1917 and 1920. It was declared following the February Revolution in Russia by the First Universal. In March 1 ...
, an action they regarded as political treason.
After the war, Rudnytsky attended the
Geneva Graduate Institute where he worked on his second doctorate and where in 1949 he met and married an American
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
, Joanne Benton. Rudnytsky studied English intensely, and in 1951 he emigrated to the USA. Having been informed it would be difficult to secure a good professorship without a US degree, he resumed work on his second doctoral dissertation at Columbia. By 1953 his funding had run out, and he took a position teaching history at the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
in Madison and later at
La Salle University
La Salle University () is a private, Catholic university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The university was founded in 1863 by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and named for St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle.
History
La ...
in Philadelphia from 1956 to 1967. He received his first permanent position in 1967 at the
American University
The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...
in Washington D.C. From 1971 to his death in 1984, he was a professor at the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...
, a founder of the
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...
(CIUS), a member of the
Shevchenko Scientific Society
The Shevchenko Scientific Society () is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication that was founded in 1873.
Unlike the government-funded National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the society ...
and the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.
Focus of work
As a result of his early interest in German transcendental philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries, Rudnytsky’s chief academic interest became the study of historical cognition. In keeping with the evolutionary outlook of idealism characteristic in German historicism, Rudnytsky used history to understand the development of socio-political thought, particularly that of Ukraine from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s.
The main focus of Rudnytsky’s work revolved around the following topics:
# The concept and problem of “historical” and “non-historical” nations;
# The intellectual origins of modern Ukraine and the structure of nineteenth-century Ukrainian history;
# The problem of the intelligentsia and intellectual development in Ukraine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;
# Galicia under the
Habsburg Empire
The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...
and its contribution to the Ukrainian struggle for statehood;
# The
Ukrainian revolution of 1917—21 and the
Fourth Universal in the historical context of Ukrainian political thought, or autonomy vs. independence;
# Ukraine within the Soviet system;
# Galician Ukrainian inter-war nationalism;
# Ukrainians and their nearest neighbours, the Poles and the Russians;
# 1848 in Galicia: an evaluation of political pamphlets.
Legacy
According to Eastern Europe historian
Timothy Snyder
Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute f ...
, Rudnytsky decisively argued against the proposition that Ukraine ought to be a homogeneous nation - that it should be exclusively for and about people who spoke Ukrainian and shared Ukrainian culture. Rudnytsky believed, as
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky ( uk, Михайло Сергійович Грушевський, Chełm, – Kislovodsk, 24 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figure ...
did, in Ukraine's
social historical continuity of development towards an independent democratic nation, and also believed, as
Vyacheslav Lypynsky
Vyacheslav Kazymyrovych Lypynsky ( pl, Wacław Lipiński, uk, Липинський В'ячеслав Казимирович) (April 5, 1882 — June 14, 1931) was a Ukrainian historian, social and political activist, an ideologue of Ukrainian c ...
did, that its destiny was to be
pluralistic. The opposing view in Ukraine was championed by
Dmytro Dontsov
Dmytro Ivanovych Dontsov ( ua, Дмитро Іванович Донцов) (August 29, 1883 – March 30, 1973) was a Ukrainian nationalist writer, publisher, journalist and political thinker whose radical ideas, known as integral nationalism, we ...
who took his cues from
Italian fascism and became the far right conservative voice of Ukrainian
ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocratic) approach to various politi ...
. According to Snyder, Rudnytsky’s response to ethnic nationalism won the argument, both in Ukraine and among North American Ukrainian expatriates, about what the Ukrainian nation should be. Instead of the nation looking for legitimacy in dubious historical claims or assertions of a homogeneous culture, Rudnytsky’s view was that a nation is fundamentally the result of political acts of commitment directed at a common future, which means that in principle, anyone can take part in it.
Works
Books
*
*
Books in Ukrainian:
*
*
*
Rudnytsky edited books
*
*
Individual essays
*
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
:•
*
** (WP article:
Mykhailo Drahomanov
Mykhailo Petrovych Drahomanov ( ukr, Михайло Петрович Драгоманов; 18 September 1841 – 2 July 1895) was a Ukrainian intellectual and public figure. As an academic, Drahomanov was an economist, historian, philosopher, and ...
)
** (WP article:
Ukrainian Radical party
The Ukrainian Radical Party, (URP), ( uk, Українська радикальна партія, УPП, ''Ukrajinśka Radykaľna Partija'') founded in October 1890 as Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party and based on the radical movement in wester ...
))
**
**
**
** (WP article:
Transcarpathia
Transcarpathia may refer to:
Place
* relative term, designating any region beyond the Carpathians (lat. ''trans-'' / beyond, over), depending on a point of observation
* Romanian Transcarpathia, designation for Romanian regions on the inner or ...
)
** (WP article:
Vyacheslav Lypynsky
Vyacheslav Kazymyrovych Lypynsky ( pl, Wacław Lipiński, uk, Липинський В'ячеслав Казимирович) (April 5, 1882 — June 14, 1931) was a Ukrainian historian, social and political activist, an ideologue of Ukrainian c ...
)
** (WP article:
Tomáš Masaryk
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (7 March 185014 September 1937) was a Czechoslovak politician, statesman, sociologist, and philosopher. Until 1914, he advocated restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state. With the help of t ...
)
**
** (WP article:
Hipolit Volodymyr Terletsky)
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rudnytsky, Ivan L.
1919 births
1984 deaths
Historians of Ukraine
Theoretical historians
People from Lviv Oblast
Writers from Lviv
Ukrainian emigrants to Canada
Ukrainian expatriates in Canada
Ukrainian male writers
University of Lviv alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Charles University alumni
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies alumni
Columbia University alumni
American University faculty and staff
University of Alberta faculty
Members of the Shevchenko Scientific Society
20th-century Ukrainian historians
20th-century Canadian historians
20th-century Canadian male writers