George Shevelov
Encyclopedia
George Yurii Shevelov. (pseud: Yurii Sherekh, Hryhory Shevchuk, Šerech, Sherekh, Sher; Гр. Ш., Ю. Ш. and others), (December 17, 1908, Kharkiv
- April 12, 2002, New York
) - Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic. A longtime professor of Slavic philology
at Columbia University
, he challenged the prevailing notion of a unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarusan and Russian later developed, instead proposing that these languages emerged independently from one another.
, Ukraine
, then part of the Russian Empire
in 1908. Some sources however, indicate Kharkiv
as his place of birth (his mother incorrectly stated his birthplace in order to escape persecution). His family moved to Kharkiv in 1910. His father, Vladimir Karlovich Shnaider (Schneider) was a high ranking Russian Imperial Army officer who held the rank of major-general. His father and mother (Varvara Meder, who originally was of noble birth from an established Moscow family) were both ethnic Germans. When Russia declared war on the German Empire in 1914, his father – a fervent Russian monarchist - decided to russify the family name. Shnaider choose the Russian equivalent of his surname = Shevelov, and also changed the patronymic “Karlovich” to “Yuryevich”. Such changes required a personal petition to the Tsar, and in his case it was personally granted by Nikolai II
in 1916. During the WWI Yurii and his mother moved to Kharkiv.
At the beginning of 1918, Shevelov’s father was missing in action and was presumed killed.
In Kharkiv, Yurii initially attended the E.Druzhkova Private School, then at 3rd State Boy's Gymnasium, and then continued his education at the Technical School #7 .
informer.
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.
and remained in Kharkiv following the Soviet evacuation, and after the Wehrmacht
troops entered Kharkiv on 25 October 1941. He joined the “New Ukraine” in December 1941, a Ukrainian language newspaper partially controlled by OUN. Later Shevelov also worked at the “Ukrainian Sowing” newspaper (}. 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 . Shevelov answered the allegation in an interview stating that he never received the letter "...А потім у нас відбулася ще одна зустріч віч-на-віч. Гончар почав на мене нападати – ідеологічно, згадувати якісь факти, про які я нічого не знаю. Ніби-то коли в роки війни він потрапив до харківської в"язниці, то передав мені лист, в якому просив посприяти його визволенню, а я міг, та не захотів. Можливо, такий лист і справді був, але до мене він ніколи не потрапляв.". Honchar escaped death to become a renowned and influential Ukrainian writer. Shevelov has been critical of Soviet novels including Honchar's major work.
Shevelov and his mother fled the returning Red Army's advance on Kharkiv in February 1943. He resided for a brief period of time in Lviv
were he continued his work in the study of 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 moved to Poland (Krynica) and then to Slovakia, then Austria and finally to Saxony
.
” in Munich and defended his doctorate dissertation in philology in 1947, continuing on his pre-war research and work ""До генези називного речення" (1941) . He was also vice-president of the MUR , a Ukrainian literary association (1945–49). In order to avoid repatriation to Soviet Union from Germany, he moved to neutral Sweden, were he worked from 1950-52 as Russian language lecturer at Lund 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 “Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences” (1959–61, 1981–86) and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta
(1983) and Lund University
(1984). He was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile and was published in numerous émigré bulletins and magazines.
and from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
In 2001 he published 2 volumes of his memoirs “Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги).”: Спогади.
He died in 2002 in New York.
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
- April 12, 2002, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
) - Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic. A longtime professor of Slavic philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, he challenged the prevailing notion of a unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarusan and Russian later developed, instead proposing that these languages emerged independently from one another.
Early life
George Yurii Shevelov was born Yurii Shneider in KharkivKharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, then part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
in 1908. Some sources however, indicate Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
as his place of birth (his mother incorrectly stated his birthplace in order to escape persecution). His family moved to Kharkiv in 1910. His father, Vladimir Karlovich Shnaider (Schneider) was a high ranking Russian Imperial Army officer who held the rank of major-general. His father and mother (Varvara Meder, who originally was of noble birth from an established Moscow family) were both ethnic Germans. When Russia declared war on the German Empire in 1914, his father – a fervent Russian monarchist - decided to russify the family name. Shnaider choose the Russian equivalent of his surname = Shevelov, and also changed the patronymic “Karlovich” to “Yuryevich”. Such changes required a personal petition to the Tsar, and in his case it was personally granted by Nikolai II
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
in 1916. During the WWI Yurii and his mother moved to Kharkiv.
At the beginning of 1918, Shevelov’s father was missing in action and was presumed killed.
In Kharkiv, Yurii initially attended the E.Druzhkova Private School, then at 3rd State Boy's Gymnasium, and then continued his education at the Technical School #7 .
In Soviet Ukraine
In 1925 Shevelov graduated from the First Kharkiv Trade and Industry Union school (}. From 1925-1927 he worked as a statistician and archive keeper for South Chemical Trust. From 1927-1931 he attended classes at the literary-linguistic branch of the Kharkiv People's Education Institute. From August 1931 he was employed as a Ukrainian language school teacher. From 1932 till 1938 he was employed as a Ukrainian language teacher at the Ukrainian Communist Newspaper Technical School . From 1933 till 1939 he also taught Ukrainian language at the Ukrainian Communist Institute for Journalism. From September 1936 he was a postgraduate student under the guidance of Leonid Bulakhovsky. In 1939 he taught the history of the Ukrainian language and literature. From November 1939 he became the assistant professor and deputy chair of the philology department of the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute. In 1941 he became a research fellow at the Linguistic Institute of the Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. In that same year he was pressured to become an NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
informer.
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.
During WWII
Shevelov was able to avoid induction into the Red ArmyRed Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
and remained in Kharkiv following the Soviet evacuation, and after the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
troops entered Kharkiv on 25 October 1941. He joined the “New Ukraine” in December 1941, a Ukrainian language newspaper partially controlled by OUN. Later Shevelov also worked at the “Ukrainian Sowing” newspaper (}. From April 1942 Shevelov worked for the city administration and collaborated with the educational organization Prosvita
Prosvita
Prosvita is a society created in the nineteenth century in Ukrainian Galicia for preserving and developing Ukrainian culture and education among population....
. In his memoirs, one of his former students Oles Honchar
Oles Honchar
Oleksandr Terentiyovych Honchar , was a Ukrainian and Soviet writer and public figure fighting for the reinstatement of the Ukrainian culture in the Soviet society after its abolition by the establishment.-Early years:According to several encyclopedias Honchar was born in the village of Sukhe in...
claimed that when as a Soviet POW he was detained in a Nazi Camp in Kharkiv, Shevelov refused his pleas for assistance . Shevelov answered the allegation in an interview stating that he never received the letter "...А потім у нас відбулася ще одна зустріч віч-на-віч. Гончар почав на мене нападати – ідеологічно, згадувати якісь факти, про які я нічого не знаю. Ніби-то коли в роки війни він потрапив до харківської в"язниці, то передав мені лист, в якому просив посприяти його визволенню, а я міг, та не захотів. Можливо, такий лист і справді був, але до мене він ніколи не потрапляв.". Honchar escaped death to become a renowned and influential Ukrainian writer. Shevelov has been critical of Soviet novels including Honchar's major work.
Shevelov and his mother fled the returning Red Army's advance on Kharkiv in February 1943. He resided for a brief period of time in Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
were he continued his work in the study of 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 moved to Poland (Krynica) and then to Slovakia, then Austria and finally to Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
.
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 UniversityUkrainian Free University
The Ukrainian Free University is a private graduate university located in Munich, Germany.-History:The Ukrainian Free University was established in Vienna, January 17, 1921. The idea to organize a Ukrainian university-in-exile came from Ukrainian academics, some of whom had held chairs at...
” in Munich and defended his doctorate dissertation in philology in 1947, continuing on his pre-war research and work ""До генези називного речення" (1941) . He was also vice-president of the MUR , a Ukrainian literary association (1945–49). In order to avoid repatriation to Soviet Union from Germany, he moved to neutral Sweden, were he worked from 1950-52 as Russian language lecturer at Lund University
Lund University
Lund University , located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, is one of northern Europe's most prestigious universities and one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, frequently ranked among the world's top 100 universities...
.
In the USA
In 1952, together with mother, he emigrated to the USA. After settling in the United States he worked as a lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
(1952-4), associate professor (1954-8) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(1958–77). He was one of the founders and president of the émigré scholarly organization “Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences” (1959–61, 1981–86) and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...
(1983) and Lund University
Lund University
Lund University , located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, is one of northern Europe's most prestigious universities and one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, frequently ranked among the world's top 100 universities...
(1984). 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 National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 1999 he received an honorary doctorate from the Kharkiv UniversityKharkiv University
The University of Kharkiv or officially the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University is one of the major universities in Ukraine, and earlier in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union...
and from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
In 2001 he published 2 volumes of his memoirs “Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги).”: Спогади.
He died in 2002 in New York.
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, Belarus languages. Shevelov argued against the commonly held view of an original, unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarus and Russian languages diverged and instead proposed the existence of several dialectical groups (Kieven-Pollisyan, Galician-Podolian, Polotsk-Smolesnsk, Novgorodian-Tversk, Murom-Ryazansk) that had been distinct from the beginning and which later formed into separate Ukrainian, Russian and Belarus 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 centurySelected bibliography
- "Головні правила українського правопису" (Neue Ulm, 1946),
- "До генези називного речення" (Munich, 1947),
- "Галичина в формуванні нової української літературної мови" (Munich, 1949),
- "Сучасна українська літературна мова" (Munich, 1949),
- "Нарис сучасної української літературної мови" (Munich, 1951),
- "Всеволод Ганцов – Олена Курило" (Winnipeg , 1954),
- "A Reader іn the Hіstory of the Eastern Slavіc" (New-York 1958, співав.),
- "The Syntax of Modern Lіterary Ukraіnіan" (1963),
- "Не для дітей. Літературно-критичні статті і есеї" (New-York, 1964),
- "A Prehіstory of Slavіc: The Hіstorіcal Phonology of Common Slavіc" (1964, Heidelberg; 1965, New-York),
- "Dіe ukraіnіsche Schrіftsprache 1798–1965" (Wiesbaden, 1966),
- "Teasers and Appeasers" (1971),
- "Друга черга: Література. Театр. Ідеології" (1978),
- "A Hіstorіcal Phonology of the Ukraіnіan Language" (1979» «Історична фонологія української мови», перекл. укр., 2002),
- "Українська мова в першій половині двадцятого століття(1900–1941): Стан і статус" (1987) and many other.
Book 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