Ivan L. Rudnytsky

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This article is about the historian of Ukraine. For professional footballer, see Ivan Rudnytskyi.

Ivan L. Rudnytsky
Іван Лисяк Рудницький
Born
Joannes Lysiak[6]

(1919-10-27)27 October 1919
Vienna, Austria
Died25 April 1984(1984-04-25) (aged 64)
Edmonton, Canada
Spouses
  • Mary Joanne Benton
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1949; div. 1966)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1968)​
Children
  • Peter
  • Elizabeth
Parents
ThesisMychajlo Drahomanov: A contribution to the development of political ideas in Eastern Europe ((in German)) (1945)
Doctoral advisorEduard Winter [d]
Influences
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
Institutions
Main interestsHistory of Ukraine
Notable worksEssays in Modern Ukrainian History
Influenced

Ivan Pavlovych Lysiak Rudnytsky (

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 as one of the most influential Ukrainian historians of the twentieth century.[2][7] He is sometimes referred to as Ivan Łysiak-Rudnytsky, but the surname he used was his mother’s name Rudnytsky.[8]

Personal background

Ivan Rudnytsky was born in Vienna, Austria 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 (1918 – 1919).[9] His father Pavlo Lysiak [d] was a lawyer and his mother Milena Rudnytska 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: Ivan Kedryn-Rudnytsky [d] (prominent political leader and publicist of Ukrainian identity),[10] Myhailo Rudnytsky [d] (literary scholar, literary critic, translator),[11] Antin Rudnytsky [d] (conductor and composer)[12] 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.[13]

Intellectual development

Rudnytsky began his academic career at the

Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, receiving his doctorate in History in 1945. His doctoral advisor was the noted scholar of slavic studies, Eduard Winter [d], who held Rudnytsky’s oral doctoral defence on a Prague street during an air raid prior to Soviet occupation.[14][15]

Driven by a desire to combat the influence of the Ukrainian nationalists, Rudnytsky became a leading member of several student organizations in the 1940s.[16] 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 Vasyl Rudko [d] and Omeljan Pritsak). 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, an action they regarded as political treason.[17]

After the war, Rudnytsky attended the

Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS),[19] a member of the Shevchenko Scientific 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.[1]

The main focus of Rudnytsky’s work revolved around the following topics:[20]

  1. The concept and problem of “historical” and “non-historical” nations;
  2. The intellectual origins of modern Ukraine and the structure of nineteenth-century Ukrainian history;
  3. The problem of the intelligentsia and intellectual development in Ukraine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;
  4. Galicia under the
    Habsburg Empire
    and its contribution to the Ukrainian struggle for statehood;
  5. The Ukrainian revolution of 1917—21 and the Fourth Universal in the historical context of Ukrainian political thought, or autonomy vs. independence;
  6. Ukraine within the Soviet system;
  7. Galician Ukrainian inter-war nationalism;
  8. Ukrainians and their nearest neighbours, the Poles and the Russians;
  9. 1848 in Galicia: an evaluation of political pamphlets.

Legacy

According to Eastern Europe historian Timothy Snyder, 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 did, in Ukraine's social historical continuity of development towards an independent democratic nation,[21][22] and also believed, as Vyacheslav Lypynsky did, that its destiny was to be pluralistic.[23] The opposing view in Ukraine was championed by Dmytro Dontsov who took his cues from Italian fascism[24] and became the far right conservative voice of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism.[25] 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.[26]

Works

Books

  • Rudnytsky, Ivan L. (1988) [1987]. Essays in Modern Ukrainian History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
    ISBN 9780916458195
    . Retrieved 21 November 2021.
  • Basarab, John; Rudnytsky, Ivan L. (1982). Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press (CIUS) Press,
    ISBN 978-0920862162
    .

Books in Ukrainian:

Rudnytsky edited books

Individual essays

References

  1. ^ a b Pritsak 1987, p. xvii.
  2. ^ a b Snyder 2022.
  3. ^ Pritsak 1987, p. xv, xvii.
  4. ^ Gyidel 2019, p. 16.
  5. ^ Pritsak 1987, p. xxi.
  6. ^ Gyidel 2019, p. 98.
  7. ^ Hrytsak 2020, p. 543.
  8. ^ Pritsak 1987, pp. xvi, xviii.
  9. ^ Gyidel 2019, p. 2.
  10. ^ Yaniv 1993.
  11. ^ Koshelivets 1993.
  12. ^ Wytwycky 1993.
  13. ^ Pritsak 1987, pp. xv–xvii.
  14. ^ Gyidel 2019, p. 19.
  15. ^ Winter 1981, p. 134.
  16. ^ Gyidel 2019, p. 22.
  17. ^ Gyidel 2019, p. 14.
  18. ^ Enc. Ukraine- Rudnytsky, 2022.
  19. ^ Dunch 2019.
  20. ^ Pritsak 1987, p. xix.
  21. ^ Rudnytsky Chapt07, p. 129.
  22. ^ Ohloblyn & Wynar 1989.
  23. ^ Rudnytsky Chapt21, p. 448.
  24. ^ Genkin 2021.
  25. ^ Rudnytsky Chapt19, p. 434.
  26. ^ SnyderClass2 2022, pp. 31:19-42:59.

Bibliography

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