Тарас Шевченко

     In 1926 the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Research Institute was established in Kharkiv, with a branch in Kyiv, to collect Shevchenko's manuscripts and artworks and study his life and oeuvre. Research was published in the institute’s annual collection Shevchenko ( 1928, 1930) and its bimonthly Literaturnyi arkhiv (1930–1). The Kyiv branch prepared a dictionary of Shevchenko's lexicon and a dictionary of his acquaintances, but the Stalinist terror prevented their publication.

     Serhii Yefremov was a leading Shevchenko scholar of the first quarter of the 20th century was. His many articles were reprinted in the collection Taras Shevchenko (1914). In 1921 Yefremov became head of the VUAN Commission for the Publication of Monuments of Modern Literature. One of the commission’s objectives was the preparation of an academic edition of Shevchenko's works. Only two vols appeared—vol 4, Shchodenni zapysky (Daily Notes, 1927), and vol 3, Lystuvannia (Correspondence, 1929), edited by Yefremov and annotated by various scholars. The remaining volumes, as well as O. Novytsky's volume on Shevchenko’s artistic works, were never published, because most of the above scholars were arrested and perished in Stalinist prisons and concentration camps during the 1930s. 

     The terror of the 1930s cut short the meaningful study of Shevchenko in the USSR for decades. The relatively few scholars who survived were placed under the control of Party officials who had nothing to do with scholarship and whose main role was to liquidate all manifestations of independent thought and opinion. A long period of systematic falsification of Shevchenko's works began, and it lasted, to a greater or lesser degree, until the demise of the USSR. Most Soviet studies of Shevchenko written in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s by Party officials (eg, Volodymyr Zatonsky, Andrii Khvylia, and Yevhen Shabliovsky) merit little discussion.

     Meanwhile, meaningful Shevchenko studies were produced by émigré scholars in the West. In the 1930s, the main center of Shevchenko studies was the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw, whose associates prepared and published 13 volumes of a 16-volume edition of Shevchenko’s complete works (1934–38) before the German and Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939 put an end to the project. Vols 2–4 and 6–12 were edited by Pavlo Zaitsev, vol 14 by Bohdan Lepky, and vol 15 by Roman Smal-Stotsky; vol 16 consisted of a bibliography compiled by Volodymyr Doroshenko. Vol 1 was not published; Zaitsev’s biography of Shevchenko, which had been planned for that volume, was published separately two decades later, in 1955, in the United States. The volumes contained commentaries and annotations by the editors and other Shevchenko scholars such as Leonid Biletsky, Ivan Bryk, Dmytro Doroshenko, Oleksander Lototsky, Yevhen Malaniuk, Stepan Siropolko, and Dmytro Chyzhevsky. In 1934 two other books on Shevchenko were published in Warsaw: Zaitsev’s Polish study on Shevchenko and the Poles in the context of Ukrainian-Polish relations in the mid-19th century; and Stepan-Stotsky’s Taras Shevchenko: Interpretatsiï (Taras Shevchenko: Interpretations, reprinted in New York in 1965), which focused on the bard’s criticism of and opposition to Russian domination.

     In Prague, meanwhile, Vasyl Simovych wrote a popular study of Shevchenko’s life and works (1934; reprinted in 1941 and 1944). Much earlier, in 1921 while in Berlin, he had prepared an annotated edition of Kobzar. Also in Berlin, Dmytro Doroshenko prepared a popular booklet in German, Schewtschenko, der grosse ukrainische Nationaldichter (1929); it was also translated and published in French (1931), English (as Taras Shevchenko: The National Poet of the Ukraine and Taras Shevchenko: Bard of Ukraine, 1936, repr 1946), and Italian (1939). Doroshenko also wrote a survey of post-First World War Shevchenko studies, ‘Die Forschung über Taras Ševčenko in der Nachkriegszeit,’ published in Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, 9 (1932). In 1937 the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin published Taras Schewtschenko, der ukrainische Nationaldichter, l814–l86l, a collection of articles by K. H. Meyer, G. Specht, and Zenon Kuzelia and of translations of Shevchenko’s poems.

     In France, Elie Borschak (I. Borshchak) pointed to Shevchenko's role in the struggle for Ukrainian self-determination in his article ‘Le mouvement national ukrainien au XIXe siècle,’ Le Monde Slave, November 1930. A few years later the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) in Lviv published Borschak’s Shevchenko u Frantsiï: Narys iz istoriï franko-ukraïns’kykh vzaiemyn (Shevchenko in France: A Historical Sketch of Franco-Ukrainian Relations, 1933). Another notable contribution to Shevchenko studies before the Second World War was Filaret Kolessa’s book on Shevchenko’s poetry (Lviv 1939); it contains two monograph-length works, on the folkloric element in Shevchenko’s poetry and on Shevchenko’s verse form.

     Several valuable studies appeared during the Second World War: Yarema Aizenshtok's Iak pratsiuvav Shevchenko (How Shevchenko Worked, 1940); O. Borshchahivsky and M. Yosypenko's book on Shevchenko and the theater (1941); Mykola Hrinchenko's book on Shevchenko and music (1941); Sviatoslav Hordynsky's booklet on Shevchenko the painter (1942); Yevhen Yulii Pelensky's Shevchenko—kliasyk (Shevchenko: A Classic, 1942); and some articles by Leonid Bulakhovsky and Oleksander Doroshkevych.

     After the Second World War, the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR concentrated on completing a 10-volume ‘full academic’ edition of Shevchenko's works begun in the 1930s. Vols 3–4 (dramatic works) appeared in 1949, and vol 5 (the diary and autobiography), in 1951. Vols 1–2 (the poetry) were reprinted from the 1939 edition in 1951 and 1953, and vol 6 (letters, notes, etc), in 1957. Vols 7–10 (the artworks) did not appear until 1961–4. Unfortunately this edition was not free of the censorship and falsifications that had marred Shevchenko studies in Soviet Ukraine. Some, though by no means all, of its deficiencies were removed from the subsequent ‘full’ edition of Shevchenko, which appeared in 6 vols in 1963–4. Reproductions of Shevchenko's artistic oeuvre were also published in a separate four-volume edition in 1961–4. Beginning in 1952 the Institute of Literature held annual conferences on Shevchenko and published the proceedings in collections; unfortunately, much of their content mirrored the Party line and limitations on scholarly freedom and rigor. Nonetheless, some worthwhile books did appear: Sava Chavdarov’s on Shevchenko’s pedagogical ideas (1953); V. Shubravsky’s on Shevchenko's dramaturgy (1957, 1959, 1961); D. Iofanov’s on Shevchenko’s life and works (1957); Yurii Ivakin’s on Shevchenko’s satire (1959, 1964); and Yevhen Nenadkevych’s Z tvorchoï laboratoriï T. H. Shevchenka (From T. H. Shevchenko’s Creative Laboratory, 1959).

     Many works appeared in Ukraine to mark the 150th anniversary of Shevchenko’s birth in 1961 and the centenary of his death in 1964. Among the more notable books published then in Ukraine were Yurii Ivakin's on the style of Shevchenko's political poetry (1961) and his two-volume commentary on Kobzar (1964–8); Vasyl S. Vashchenko's on Shevchenko’s language (1963); Petro Prykhodko's on Shevchenko and Ukrainian Romanticism (1963); Hryhorii Verves's on Shevchenko and Poland (1964); a two-volume dictionary of Shevchenko's vocabulary (1914); and a two-volume bibliography of Shevchenkiana (1963) written on the territory of the former USSR during the years 1839–1959. The latter work was augmented in 1968 by F. Sarana's bibliography of Shevchenko studies published during the years 1960–64, but it also excluded works written outside the USSR.

     In the 1970s the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR prepared three important ‘collective’ works: Shevchenkoznavstvo: Pidsumky i problemy (Shevchenko Studies: Summations and Problems, 1975) and Shevchenkivs’kyi slovnyk (A Shevchenko Dictionary, 2 vols, 1978), both of them under the chief editorship of Yevhen Kyryliuk; and Tvorchyi metod i poetyka T. H. Shevchenka (The Creative Method and the Poetics of T. H. Shevchenko, 1980).

     In the postwar West, contributions to Shevchenko studies were published in the serials and books of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada and the United States. These included a reprint of the four-volume Kobzar edited and annotated by Leonid Biletsky; and Taras Ševčenko, 1814–1861: A Symposium (1962), edited by George Yurii Shevelov and Volodymyr V. Miiakovsky. The Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh), which was reconstituted by émigré scholars in Western Europe, North America, and Australia after the war, created a Shevchenko Studies Commission; the commission, headed by Pavlo Zaitsev, published his afore-mentioned biography of Shevchenko (1955) as well as Ševčenko: Sein Leben und sein Werk (1965), edited by J. Bojko (Yurii Blokhyn) and E. Koschmieder. Various articles about Shevchenko and about his works were also published in Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka, vols 161 (1953), 167 (1958), 176 (1962), 179–80 (1965), 187 (1976), and 214 (1991). The NTSh also prepared guides to Shevchenkiana in the libraries of Paris (1961) and Munich (1914).

     In Munich, the Ukrainian Free University (UVU) published Bojko’s Shevchenko i Moskva (Shevchenko and Moscow [ie, Russia], 1952); the Ukrainian version of his booklet Taras Shevchenko and West European Literature (1956); and, with the Slavic and Baltic Philology Seminar at the University of Munich, the collection Taras Ševčenko, 1814–1861 (1964). In 1944 Demian Horniatkevych’s earlier booklet on Shevchenko as an artist was published in German translation as Taras Schewtschenko als Maler, and Ivan Keivan’s new work on Shevchenko the artist also appeared that year.

     In postwar North America, Mykola Denysiuk’s publishing house in Chicago republished the Warsaw edition of Shevchenko’s works in 14 vols (1959–63). Vol 13, edited by Bohdan Kravtsiv, was devoted to Shevchenko studies and contained selected articles by Panteleimon Kulish, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Shchurat, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Serhii Yefremov, Oleksii Novytsky, Stepan Smal-Stotsky, Borys Navrotsky, and Filaret Kolessa. In 1961 Vasyl Barka’s book about Shevchenko, Pravda Kobzaria (The Kobzar’s Truth), appeared. The Shevchenko jubilee year of 1964 saw the appearance of Luka Lutsiv’s Taras Shevchenko, spivets’ ukraïns’koï slavy i voli (Taras Shevchenko, the Singer of Ukrainian Glory and Freedom) and the collection of articles and translations Taras Chevtchenko, 1814–1861: Sa vie et son oeuvre, edited by K. Uhryn and A. Joukovsky (Arkadii Zhukovsky). Sixteen years later, George Stephen Nestor Luckyj compiled and edited an important collection of English-language and translated criticism, Shevchenko and the Critics, 1861–1980 (1980).

     In the postwar West, booklets on Shevchenko's religious beliefs and philosophy were written by L. Biletsky (1949), Wasyl Jaszczun (1959), and Ivan Vlasovsky (1961); larger works on the subject include D. Buchynsky's Khrystyians’ko-filosofs'ka dumka Tarasa H. Shevchenka (Taras H. Shevchenko’s Christian Philosophical Thought, 1962); Relihiinist’ Tarasa Shevchenka (Taras Shevchenko's Religiosity, 1964) by Metropolitan Ilarion (né Ivan Ohiienko); and I. Stus’s Relihiini motyvy v tvorchosti Tarasa Shevchenka (Religious Motifs in Taras Shevchenko’s Works, 1989).

     Entirely new interpretations of Shevchenko were published in North America in the 1980s. George Grabowicz proposed a new mythopoeic and psychoanalytical approach in The Poet as Mythmaker: A Study of Symbolic Meaning in Taras Ševčenko (1982; Ukrainian trans 1991). Examining the structures and paradigms of the bard’s mythical thought, Grabowicz examines the relationship between Shevchenko’s Ukrainian-language poetry and his Russian-language prose, the tension between Shevchenko’s nativism and his universality as a poet, and the connection between his revolutionary fervor and his apparent fatalism. A few years later Leonid Pliushch contributed another pioneering work in the study of Shevchenko’s mythopoeic vision, Ekzod Tarasa Shevchenka (Taras Shevchenko’s Exodus, 1986). In his detailed analysis of two variants of Shevchenko’s poem ‘Moskaleva krynytsia’ (A Soldier's Well), Pliushch formulates the fundamental syncretic ‘mythology’ unifying Shevchenko’s literary oeuvre.

     With the considerable lessening of political pressure and censorship that occurred in Ukraine in the late 1980s, several new works departing from the official Soviet Communist party line in Shevchenko studies were published in Kyiv. Ivan Dziuba’s comparative study of Shevchenko’s and A. Khomiakov’s attitudes toward pan-Slavism, U vsiakoho svoia dolia (Each Has One’s Fate, 1989), challenged a number of proscribed principles of Soviet-era Shevchenko studies by presenting Shevchenko’s views as contrary to those of the Russian pan-Slavists and as advocating Ukrainian political independence. In the early 1990s several new, illustrated books about Shevchenko’s life and works focused on his role as the awakener of Ukrainian national consciousness; and formerly forbidden works by Ukrainian émigré scholars, including Zaitsev, Grabowicz, and Pliushch, were reprinted in Ukraine. Also, in 1993, Kyiv University began publishing a new scholarly periodical Shevchenkoznavchi studiï (Shevchenko Studies). Dziuba’s new study of Shevchenko’s ‘Kavkaz,’ Zastukaly serdeshnu doliu (They Cornered Our Wretched Fortune, 1995), focused on the anti-imperialist motifs in Shevchenko’s poetry and presented a critique of Russian imperialism, especially as it pertains to the tsarist conquest of Caucasia. Dziuba’s essays on Shevchenko’s legacy, many of which deal with comparative studies of Shevchenko and several Western European poets, were republished in his collection Z krynytsi lit (From the Wellspring of Years) in 2001.

     The most important contributions to Shevchenko studies to appear in post-Soviet Ukraine have continued the analysis of the poet’s mythopoeic and philosophical vision. Oksana Zabuzhko’s Shevchenkiv mif Ukraïny (Shevchenko’s Myth of Ukraine, 1997) provides a detailed analysis of earlier literary scholarship on the subject and presents a synthetic interpretation of Shevchenko as a creator of a “nation-consolidating artistic mythology” in the tradition of Dante, Cervantes, and Goethe. George Grabowicz’s collection of essays Shevchenko, iakoho ne znaiemo (The Shevchenko We Don’t Know, 1998) continues his earlier attempts at uncovering the psychological and mythopoeic ‘code’ of Shevchenko’s works (focusing, among others, on tracing the poet’s ‘symbolic autobiography’ and analyzing the motifs of self-definition in his poetry), and presents a critique of ‘mainstream’ Shevchenko studies in post-Soviet Ukraine. Ie. Nakhlik’s Dolia. Los. Sut’ba (Fate, 2003) provides a new comparative study of the works of Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz, and Aleksandr Pushkin.

     An important new biographical and textological study of Shevchenko and his works is P. Zhur’s Trudy i dni Kobzaria (The Kobzar’s Work and Days, 2003) while the most significant study of Shevchenko’s paintings and engravings is V. Iatsiuk’s Maliarstvo i hrafika Tarasa Shevchenka (Painting and Graphic Art of Taras Shevchenko, 2003).

     In 2001 A Concordance to the Poetic Works of Taras Shevchenko in 4 vols, compiled by Oleh Ilnytzkyj and G. Hawrysch, was copublished by the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press as the first publication of this type in the area of Ukrainian studies. Also in 2001, the first volume of the fullest annotated edition of Shevchenko’s works (12 vols) was published in Kyiv under the editorship of Mykola Zhulynsky. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                                     BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1. Shevchenko, Taras (English). Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Retrieved on March 22, 2007.
2. (Russian)Paola Utevskaya, Dmitriy Gorbachev, «He could have understood Picasso himself», Zerkalo Nedeli, July 26 - August 1, 1997.
3. (Russian)Historical page of Orsk.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Hryhorovych_Shevchenko