Andrew Gregorovich

Professor Emeritus Ihor Sevcenko (Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine History and Literature of Harvard University), is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the founding editor of Harvard Ukrainian Studies. As an outstanding authority on Byzantine history it is quite natural that in this volume of 12 essays he places Ukraine and Kievan Rus in the context of Byzantine history, western and Polish influences. He discusses culture, language, literature, religion, politics and geography as it affected the historic cultural development of Ukraine up to 1700.

The concluding essay: “The Rise of National Identity to 1700” is on the growth of distinct national awareness from 1650 to 1700. “Not only enlightened inhabitants of Ukraine themselves, but their foreign contemporaries as well felt that Ukrainian lands, whether they were then called Rus’, Ukrajina or Malorossija were inhabited by people distinct from Poles, Lithuanians and Muscovites.” (p. 187)

He notes that Paul of Aleppo in 1656 “found Ukrainian songs more beautiful and more euphonious than those of the Muscovites, and was astonished to find that in the Cossack land most women knew how to read and write.” Frank Sysyn, in his foreword states that Sevcenko was a pioneer in offering university lectures on Ukrainian history. He comments that “as lucid and penetrating examination of the Ukrainian cultural past, they remain unsurpassed.” This volume with its “scholarly quality and vitality” sets a standard. Some of the essays are new, others are revised from previous publication and all are accompanied by a useful Bibliographic Note.

UKRAINE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century, by Ihor Sevcenko (Shevchenko). Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1996. xix, 234 p. maps. ISBN 1-895571-15-4 (pb.) $24.95 (plus $4.00 shipping) (Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research. Monograph Series, 1) CIUS Press, 352 Athabasca Hall, Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E8