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George Shevelov

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George Yurii Shevelov
File:Sheveliov Yurij.jpg
Born(1908-12-17)17 December 1908
Łomża, Russian Empire
Died12 April 2002(2002-04-12) (aged 93)
New York, USA
OccupationSlavic linguist

George Yurii Shevelov (Template:Lang-ua). (pseud: Yurii Sherekh), (December 17, 1908, Łomża - April 12, 2002, New York) - slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic.

Biography

Early life

George Yurii Shevelov was born Yurii Shneider in Łomża, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. Some sources however indicate Kharkiv as his place of birth. His father, Vladimir Karlovich Shneider was a high ranking Russian Imperial Army officer – he commanded a battalion, and later brigade, and was eventually elevated to the rank of major-general. His father was an ethnic German as was also his mother - Varvara Meder, who originally came from a noble Moscow family. When Russia declared war on the German Empire in 1914 his father – a fervent Russian monarchist - decided to russify the family name. Shneider choose the surname Shevelov, and also changed his patronymic “Karlovich” to “Yuryevich”. Such changes required a personal appeal to the Tsar and in this case it was granted by Nikolai II in 1916. During the war Yurii and his mother moved to Kharkiv. At the beginning of 1918, Shevelov’s father became missing in action (presumably killed). In Kharkiv, Yurii attended the E.Druzhkova Private School, then at 3rd State boy's Gymnasium, and then studied at 7th trade school (Template:Lang-ua).

Soviet Ukraine

In 1925 he graduated from the First Kharkiv Trade-Industry trade union school (Template:Lang-ua). In 1925-1927 Shevelov worked as a statistician, and archive keeper for South Chemical Trust. In 1927-1931 he attended the literature-linguistic branch of the Kharkiv People's Pedagogical Institute. From August 1931 he worked as a Ukrainian language schoolteacher. From 1932 until 1938 he worked as an Ukrainian language teacher at the Ukrainian communist newspaper technical school (Template:Lang-ua). From 1933 until 1939 he also worked as a Ukrainian language teacher at the Ukrainian communist Institute of Journalism. In September 1936 he became a postgraduate student under tutelage of Leonid Bulakhovsky. In 1939 he works as a teacher of history, Ukrainian language and literature. From November 1939 he was an 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. That same year he was recruited as an NKVD informer.

In Nazi controlled territory

Shevelov evaded being drafted into the Red Army and voluntarily remained in the city under the German occupation. Wehrmacht troops entered Kharkiv on 25 October. In December 1941 he became a columnist for the “New Ukraine”, a newspaper established by a Nazi department of propaganda and partially controlled by OUN-B members who arrived in Kharkiv at the heels of Germans. Later he also joined another “newspaper ” “Ukrainian Sowing” (Template:Lang-ua. From April 1942 Shevelov worked in the city administration. He also collaborated with the educational organization Prosvita. In his memoirs, one of his former students Oles Honchar claimed that when he was a Soviet POW he was detained in a Nazi Death Camp in Kharkiv Shevelov refused his pleas for assistance . Honchar escaped death and eventually became a renowned and influential Ukrainian writer. and Shevelov had been very critical of Soviet novels including Honchar's major work.

Shevelov and his mother fled Kharkiv as the Red Army advanced in February 1943. He stayed for a time in Lviv were he continued to work, in particular on his “New Ukrainian Grammar” until the Spring of 1944, when the Soviets pushed further West. Shevelov with the assistance of the Ukrainian Central Committee moved to Poland (Crynytsya) and then to Slovakia, then Austria and finally to Saxony.

In Europe

After fall of Nazi Germany Shevelov work for the émigré newspaper “Chas” (“Time”) under a non-de-plume in order to avoid identification and repatriation to the Soviet Union. From 1946 enroled in the émigré “Ukrainian Free University” in Munich and obtained a philologist doctorate there in 1947 for his Soviet-time work ""До генези називного речення" (1941). He was also vice-president of the MUR (Template:Lang-ua a Ukrainian literary association (1945-49). Afraid of repatriation to Soviet Union he moved to neutral Sweden were he worked from 1950-52 as Russian language lecturer at Lund University.

In USA

In 1952 together with mother he emigrated to USA. After settling in the United States he served as lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University (1952-4), associate professor (1954-8) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University (1958-77). He was amongst the founders and president of the émigré scholar organization “Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences” (1959-61, 1981-86) was an honorary doctor of the University of Alberta (1983) and Lund University (1984). He was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile and write for numerous émigré bulletins and magazines.

In independent Ukraine

Shevelov was almost unknown in Ukrainian academic circles fropm 1943. In 1990, after an extended absence he first visited Ukraine - and was elected an international member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 1999 he received an honorary doctorate from the Kharkiv University and from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

In 2001 he published 2 volume of his memoirs “Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги).”: Спогади. He died in 2002 in New York.

Intellectual Contributions

He prepared and published more then 600 scholarly texts concerning different aspects of the philology of the Ukrainian and other Slavic languages. From 1943 he developed conception of the distinct establishment and developing of Ukrainian and, later, Byelorussian languages. Shevelov argued against the commonly held view of an original, unified East Slavic language from which the Ukrainian, Belarussian and Russian languages diverged and instead proposed the existence of several dialectical groups (Kieven-Pollisyan, Galician-Podolian, Polotsk-Smolesnsk, Novhorodian-Tversk, Murom-Ryazansk) that had been distinct from the beginning and which which later formed the separate Ukrainian, Russian and Belarussian languages. According to Shevelov, the beginnings of the seperate Ukrainian language could be traced to the 7th century while the language formed in approximately the 16th century

Bibliography

  • "Головні правила українського правопису" (Nue 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.


Notes

  1. Шевельов (Шерех), Ю.В. “Я – мене – мені…(і довкруги).”: Спогади. – Х.; Нью-Йорк: Вид-во М.П.Коць, 2001. – Т.1. p 8- 290
  2. Боґуміла Бердиховська. Україна: люди і книжки . КІС, 2009. p 167-169
  3. А. В. Скоробогатов Харків у часи німецької окупації (1941—1943). — Харків: Прапор, 2006. — ISBN 966-7880-79-6
  4. Гончар Олесь. Катарсис. — К.: Український світ, 2000
  5. http://www.ukrposhta.com/www/bulletin.nsf/0/C91830429EF355D3C22574280042C01B?OpenDocument
  6. End of a Centrury.by Svitlana Matvienko. Mirror Weekly. 20-26 April 2002.
  7. Past Honorary Degree Recipients
  8. Hedersdoktorer vid humanistiska fakulteten
  9. Шевельов Юрій (Shevelov George) (довідка)
  10. Почесні професори НаУКМА
  11. Great Ukrainian Philologist On the 100 year Anniversary of the Birth of Yuri Shevelov by Roxolana Zorivchak, professor of the University of Lviv

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


External links

2002. – T. LI. – Nr. 3. – S. 351–360 ]

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