(CIUS) On
March 10 and 11, 2010, Dr. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, associate professor of
Jewish history in the Department of History and the Crown Family Center of Jewish Studies at Northwestern University, Chicago, visited the University of Alberta. He gave two lectures
and a seminar in a lecture series at the Department of Modern Languages and
Cultural Studies organized jointly by the Ukrainian Culture, Language and
Literature Program, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Religious
Studies Program, and the Department of History and Classics. On his way to
Edmonton, Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern gave two talks in Winnipeg hosted by the
Departments of Religion and German and Slavic Studies at the University of
Manitoba, as well as the Ukrainian Labour Temple.
Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern’s presentations, which displayed an
original approach to his subjects and extraordinary erudition, captivated his
audience. In his first lecture, “Power, Victims, and Poetry: The Choice of
Leonid Pervomaisky,” he addressed a challenging and unexplored question: why
did some Ukrainian Jews, whose historical experience was incompatible with that
of Ukrainians and burdened with ethnic conflict, and who could freely draw on
the great tradition of imperial Russian culture, nevertheless identify
themselves with Ukrainian culture? Aside from the poet Pervomaisky, examples of
such cultural figures are the writer Sava Holovanivsky, the composer Ihor
Shamo, and the politician Solomon Goldelman. In Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern’s opinion,
the main reason for this “irrational” decision was the experience of
colonization and persecution among both Ukrainians and Jews in the hierarchical
structure of the Russian Empire and, later, the USSR. The lecturer pointed out that despite the dominant
discourse of historical opposition between Ukrainians and Jews, little has been
said about the record of collaboration and solidarity between them. This, he
believes, provides a basis for the construction of an alternative history.
Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern’s second lecture, “What Did They
Read? The Shtetl Jews and Their Kabbalistic Books,” was devoted to the cultural
history of Jewish communities in Ukraine, particularly Volhynia, Podilia, and the Kyiv region, in the Late Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth Centuries. In response to Enlightenment trends, Jewish book printing
in Yiddish and Hebrew increased enormously in this period, stimulating progress
in education and culture in the Jewish settlements. This book production was,
however, limited mainly to kabbalistic (mystical) literature and the promotion
of a new religious doctrine, Hasidism that stressed the preservation of
traditional Jewish identity. As autocratic rule was consolidated in Russia, Jewish book printing was banned, as was printing in the
Ukrainian language. Both cultures fell victim to the new imperial policy.
At the end of his visit, Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern conducted a
Ukrainian-language seminar on “Moisei Fishbein and His Poetry” as part of a
Ukrainian literature course taught by Dr. Natalia Pylypiuk. He emphasized the
significant contribution of this Ukrainian-Jewish poet, a native of Bukovyna,
to contemporary Ukrainian literature, as well as his sense of mission with
regard to maintaining positive Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern was born in Kyiv. After graduating
from the Spanish program in the Department of Romance and German Philology at
the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, he earned a candidate degree
in comparative literature from Moscow University (1988) and a Ph.D. in modern Jewish history from Brandeis University (2001). He is the author of three books: Jews in the
Russian Army, 1827–1917: Drafted into Modernity (Cambridge University
Press, 2008), The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew
(Yale University Press, 2009), and Lenin’s Jewish Question (forthcoming
from Yale University Press). He is currently working on a book about Jewish
shtetls between 1790 and 1830 with the goal of reconstructing and
contextualizing the material culture of these market towns of Eastern
Europe. A recipient of many
awards, Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern has lectured at many universities, including the Kyiv Mohyla Academy National University.
PHOTO
Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern in Ivan Marchuk’s studio