BRAMA, Nov 14, 2003, 1:00 am ET
Press Release
The Pereiaslav Anniversary and CIUS
The Ukrainian community in the diaspora is so fully occupied with the commemoration of the seventieth-anniversary of the genocidal Famine of 1933 that it has paid little attention to another anniversary looming, the 350th of the Pereiaslav Agreement and Council of January 1654. This is in marked contrast to the 300th anniversary, when the community mobilized against the Soviet celebration of the event as an act of the "reunion of Ukraine with Russia" and effectively lobbied the press and media to ensure that the Soviet interpretation would not be affirmed.
Yet even before the Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, issued an ukaz on the commemoration of the Famine, he issued one on the marking of the Pereiaslav Council that was reminiscent of the Soviet celebrations in calling for school competitions and artistic endeavors. Framed as part of the presidential tilt towards Russia, the ukaz called forth protests from the Ukrainian intelligentsia and criticism from the International Congress of Ukrainian Studies that met in Chernivtsi in August 2002.
On June 14, 2003, three CIUS historians, Zenon Kohut, Serhii Plokhy, and Frank Sysyn wrote a letter to their colleagues in Ukraine affirming their support for freedom of intellectual enquiry in Ukrainian historical research and calling on their colleagues not to be seduced by blandishments of the authorities to take part in this transparent political gambit. Realizing the importance of providing reliable historical information on the Pereiaslav events, CIUS has undertaken a number of steps to provide information for the academic and Ukrainian communities.
CIUS Press will make John Basarab's book Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study its featured book of the month in December 2003. The volume is a thorough study of the documents of the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations, including translations of the most important texts. The volume examines the views of the most important scholars who wrote on the Pereiaslav treaty from the seventeenth century to the 1970s. More information about this volume, as well as other publications and order forms, can be found on the CIUS Press Web site at www.utoronto.ca/cius.
At the same time, the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research has completed editing of the translation of volume 9, book 1, of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's History of Ukraine-Rus, which takes the reader up to the eve of the Pereiaslav events. The volume will be published in 2004, and together with volume 8, on the period 1625-1650, will provide the English reader with the views of Ukraine's greatest historian on the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the background of the Pereiaslav treaty. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine project has made a general entry on the Pereiaslav Treaty accessible to Internet users around the world on the IEU Web site at www.encyclopediaofukraine.com.
CIUS has also taken an active role in funding and producing a major volume on the Pereiaslav Council and Treaty that has just been published in Ukraine. It was published in 2003 in Kyiv by Smoloskyp Press for the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA, and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Pavlo Sokhan served as the main editor, and Iaroslav Dashkevych, as the associate editor. Entitled Pereiaslavs'ka rada 1654 roku (istoriohrafiia ta doslidzhennia) (The Pereiaslav Council of 1654 (Historiography and Research), the 888 page volume printed in 5,000 copies includes 21 articles. Part 1 contains 10 reprints of classical works of Ukrainian historiography by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Viacheslav Lypynsky, Rostyslav Lashchenko, Andrii Iakovliv, and Oleksander Ohloblyn as well as five scholarly-publicistic essays by Mykhailo Drahomanov, Dmytro Dontsov, Roman Bzhesky, Zynovii Knysh and Mykhailo Braichevsky. Braichevsky's piece is accompanied by the notes of the criticisms (in fact attacks) in the 1970s of his lengthy essay "Annexation or Reunion?" by members of the Institute of History of the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences as well as his answers to his critics, edited and commented on by Ihor Hyrych. The second part of the volume has six articles on Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and English-language historiography by Frank Sysyn, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Oleksii Ias, Viktor Brekhunenko, and Miros"aw Nagielski as well as five new studies on the problem by Viktor Brekhunenko, Viktor Horobets, Taras Chukhlib, Serhii Plokhy, and Iaroslav Fedoruk. The monumental volume is being launched in many cities throughout Ukraine this autumn and winter in order to permit the Ukrainian public to gain a deeper understanding of the historical events of 1654 and how they have been interpreted since.
Pereiaslavs'ka rada 1654 roku is available from CIUS Press for $64.95 and can be ordered by e-mail (cius@ualberta.ca), mail (CIUS Press, University of Alberta, 450 Athabasca Hall, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E8), phone ([780] 492-2973), or fax ([780] 492-4967).
CIUS is cosponsoring an international conference on the Pereiaslav events that will be held in Kyiv in January 2004, precisely 350 years after the meeting of the council. The aim of the conference is to provide scholarly discussion of the Pereiaslav Agreement and its consequences and to counter the anticipated official celebrations. The Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research and the Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine of CIUS are sponsoring a conference in cooperation with colleagues at St. Petersburg University in May 2004. The goal of the conference is to gather an international group of scholars in a Russian setting to discuss various interpretations of the Pereiaslav events.
CIUS has striven to ensure that the Western academic world and media, the Ukrainian diaspora, and the Ukrainian public will have authoritative material on the Pereiaslav Treaty and Council. At a time when these historical topics are the subject of political and ideological struggles, these information sources are of especial importance.
View Page Samples On-Line:
Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study
http://www.utoronto.ca/cius/publications/books/pereiaslav.htm
Pereiaslavs'ka rada 1654 roku
http://www.utoronto.ca/cius/publications/books/pereiaslavskarada.htm
_____________________________________________
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press
University of Toronto
1 Spadina Cres., Rm. 109
Toronto, ON
Canada M5S 2J5
Telephone: 416-978-6934
Facsimile: 416-978-2672
E-mail: cius@chass.utoronto.ca
Web site: www.utoronto.ca/cius
www.encyclopediaofukraine.com
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