George Shevelov

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George Shevelov
Born
Kharkov, Russian Empire (now Kharkiv, Ukraine)
Died12 April 2002(2002-04-12) (aged 93)
Other namesYurii Sherekh, Hryhory Shevchuk, Šerech, Sherekh, Sher; Гр. Ш., Ю. Ш.
Known forLinguist & literary historian of Ukrainian language
Scientific career
Doctoral advisorLeonid Bulakhovsky
Notable studentsOles Honchar

George Shevelov[a] (born Yuri Schneider[b], 17 December 1908 – 12 April 2002) was a Ukrainian-American professor, linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic of German heritage. A longtime professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University, he challenged the prevailing notion of a unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian later developed, instead proposing that these languages emerged independently from one another.

Early life

Yuri Schneider was born in

Nikolai II in 1916. During the World War I, Shevelov and his mother moved to Kharkiv. At the beginning of 1918, Shevelov's father was missing in action
and was presumed killed.

In Kharkiv, Shevelov initially attended the E. Druzhkova Private School, then the 3rd State Boy's Gymnasium, followed by Technical School #7 (Ukrainian: 7-а трудовa школa).

In Soviet Ukraine

In 1925 Shevelov graduated from the

Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. In that same year he was pressured to become an NKVD informer.[5][6]

In 1934, Shevelov was the co-author of a grammar of the Ukrainian language in two volumes. This text was reprinted in 1935 and 1936.[7]

World War II

Shevelov was able to avoid induction into the

OUN.[8] Later Shevelov also worked at the "Ukrainian Sowing" newspaper (Ukrainian: «Український засів»). From April 1942 Shevelov worked for the city administration and collaborated with the educational organization Prosvita. In his memoirs, one of his former students Oles Honchar claimed that when as a Soviet POW he was detained in a Nazi Camp in Kharkiv, Shevelov refused his pleas for assistance [9][failed verification]. Shevelov answered the allegation in an interview stating that he never received the letter "...And then we had another face-to-face meeting. Honchar started attacking me - ideologically, recalling some facts that I knew nothing about. As though when he was imprisoned in Kharkiv during the war, he gave me a letter in which he asked me to help free him, and I could have, but I didn't want to. Perhaps there really was such a letter, but it never reached me.".[10] Honchar escaped death to become a renowned and influential Ukrainian writer.[11] Shevelov has been critical of Soviet novels including Honchar's major work.[12]

Shevelov and his mother fled the returning Red Army's advance on Kharkiv in February 1943. He lived for a brief period in Lviv, within the General Government, where he continued to study the Ukrainian language, including the creation of a new Ukrainian grammar until the spring of 1944, when the Soviets continued their drive westwards. Shevelov with the assistance of the Ukrainian Central Committee [pl; ru; uk] moved to Poland (Krynica[clarification needed]) and then to Slovakia, Austria and finally Saxony.

In Europe

After the fall of Nazi Germany, Shevelov worked for the Ukrainian émigré newspaper “Chas” (“Time”). In 1946 he enrolled in the Ukrainian Free University in Munich and defended his doctorate dissertation in philology in 1947, continuing on his pre-war research and work "До генези називного речення" (1941)[citation needed]. He was also vice-president of the MUR (Ukrainian: Мистецький український рух), a Ukrainian literary association (1945–49). In order to avoid repatriation to Soviet Union from Germany, he moved to neutral Sweden, where he worked in 1950–52 as Russian language lecturer at Lund University.

In the United States

In 1952, together with mother, he emigrated to the US. After settling there he worked as a lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University (1952-4), associate professor (1954-8) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University (1958–77). He was one of the founders and president of the émigré scholarly organization the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences (1959–61, 1981–86) and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta (1983) and Lund University (1984).[13][14] He was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile and was published in numerous émigré bulletins and magazines.

Return to Ukraine

Shevelov was almost unknown to Ukrainian academic circles after 1943. In 1990, after an extended absence, he visited Ukraine where he was elected an international member of the

Kharkiv University and from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.[15][16]

In 2001 he published two volumes of his memoirs “Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги).”: Спогади.

He died in 2002 in New York.

Awards

Intellectual contributions

Shevelov prepared and published more than 600 scholarly texts concerning different aspects of the philology of the Ukrainian and other Slavic languages. From 1943 he developed the concept of the distinct establishment and development of Ukrainian and, later, Belarusian languages. Shevelov argued against the commonly held view of an original, unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian languages diverged and instead proposed the existence of several dialectical groups (Kyivan-Polissyan, Galician-Podillian, Polotsk-Smolensk, Novgorodian-Tversk, Murom-Ryazansk) that had been distinct from the beginning and which later formed into separate Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian languages. According to Shevelov, the beginnings of a separate Ukrainian language could be traced to the 7th century while the language formed in approximately the 16th century [17]

Heritage and legacy

On 4 September 2013 memorial plaque to Shevelov in his native

Jewish family which, most likely, was shot".[19] In an open letter addressed the Kharkiv city council scientists from the University of Cambridge, Columbia University, the University of Kansas, Rutgers University, Northwestern University and the University of Alberta had pleaded that the allegations that Shevelov was a Nazi collaborator "were thoroughly investigated by numerous US government agencies and Columbia University who completely and unequivocally rejected these acquisitions".[19] Half an hour after the Kharkiv city council had established that the memorial plaque to Shevelov was illegal (citizens who identified themselves as) public employees destroyed the memorial plaque.[19] On 5 January 2015 the Kharkiv Administrative Court of Appeal reversed the decision of the Kharkiv city council to dismantle the memorial plaque for Shevelov.[20] In 2021 the memorial plaque was reinstated after a public fundraiser.[21]

Select bibliography

Notes

  1. ^ Russian: Юрий Владимирович Шевелёв, tr. Yuriy Vladimirovich Shevelyov
    Ukrainian: Юрій Володимирович Шевельов, romanized: Yuriy Volodymyrovych Shevelyov
  2. ^ Russian: Юрий Шнайдер, tr. Yuriy Shnaider

References

  1. ^ "Пам'яті Юрія Шевельова (Шереха)". Archived from the original on 14 December 2009. Retrieved 23 February 2010.
  2. ^ "Rieger J., Hnatiuk A. Jurij Szewelow (George Y. Shevelov, Jurij Szerech) 1908–2002 // Slavia Orientalis. – 2002. – T. LI. – Nr. 3. – S. 351–360". Archived from the original on 14 December 2009. Retrieved 23 February 2010.
  3. ^ "Shevelov, George Yurii".
  4. ^ Moser, Michael. "George Y. Shevelov's Personal "History of the Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century"". East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. 3 (1): 84. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  5. ^ Шевельов (Шерех), Ю.В. “Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги)”: Спогади. – Х.; Нью-Йорк: Вид-во М.П.Коць, 2001. – Т.1. p 8- 290
  6. ^ Боґуміла Бердиховська. Україна: люди і книжки . КІС, 2009. p 167-169
  7. ^ "Юрій Шевельов. Українська мова. Енциклопедія".
  8. ISBN 966-7880-79-6
  9. ^ Гончар Олесь. Катарсис. — К.: Український світ, 2000
  10. ^ "Юрій Шевельов: "Я хотів сказати до побачення всім, кого знав і любив..."".
  11. ^ "Server Login".
  12. ^ End of a Century.by Svitlana Matvienko. Mirror Weekly. 20–26 April 2002.
  13. ^ "University of Alberta". Archived from the original on 27 May 2011.
  14. ^ "Hedersdoktorer vid humanistiska fakulteten - Humanistiska och teologiska fakulteterna, Lunds universitet".
  15. ^ "Шевельов Юрій (Shevelov George) (довідка)".
  16. ^ "Почесні професори НаУКМА". Archived from the original on 6 October 2013. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
  17. ^ Great Ukrainian Philologist[permanent dead link] On the 100 year Anniversary of the Birth of Yuri Shevelov by Roxolana Zorivchak, professor of the University of Lviv
  18. Ukrayinska Pravda
    (4 September 2013)
  19. ^
    Ukrayinska Pravda
    (25 September 2013)
  20. Ukrayinska Pravda
    (5 January 2015)
  21. Istorychna Pravda
    (28 January 2022)

Additional references

  • Шевельов (Шерех), Ю.В. "Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги).": Спогади. – Х.; Нью-Йорк: Вид-во М.П.Коць, 2001. – Т.1.
  • Боґуміла Бердиховська. Україна: люди і книжки / Переклад з польської Тетяна Довжок. КІС, 2009. p 167-178
  • А. В. Скоробогатов Харків у часи німецької окупації (1941—1943). — Харків: Прапор, 2006. —
    ISBN 966-7880-79-6

External links

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