Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi: Istoriia intelektuala dir. by Iryna Shatokhina (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi: Istoriia intelektuala dir. by Iryna Shatokhina Ernest Gyidel (bio) Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi: Istoriia intelektuala, Directed by Iryna Shatokhina, written by Iryna Shatokhina and Yuri Shapoval (2019). https://youtu.be/vMbJIwubm58. Ivan L. Rudnytsky (1919–1984) was one of the most prominent Ukrainian émigré historians and public intellectuals in the West during the Cold War. He was a product of several outstanding circles and institutions – his mother, Milena Rudnytska, and her brothers, the Ukrainian Academic Gymnasium in Lviv, from which he graduated in 1937, Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv, where he studied law in 1937–1939, Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where he obtained a masters degree in 1942, German Charles University in Prague, from which he received a doctorate in 1945, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he pursued a degree until 1951, and Columbia University in New York, where he was a graduate student until 1953. As a university student, Rudnytsky studied law, political [End Page 297] science, international relations, sociology, philosophy, and history. Very few from his generation could boast of a better education. After his arrival as a married man in the United States in 1951, Rudnytsky decided to make a living by becoming a professional historian. Following unfinished PhD studies at Columbia and two and a half years of work as a bus inspector, he went on to teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1953–1954), La Salle College (1956–1967), Bryn Mawr College (1964–1965), the American University in Washington, DC (1967–1971), and the University of Alberta (1971–1984). He was closely involved with two Ukrainian émigré academic institutions: Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe and the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in New York until the mid-1960s. In 1976, together with Manoly Lupul and George Luckyj, he became a founding director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, serving as an associate director for three years. Rudnytsky prided himself on not being an ivory tower academic, often participating in Ukrainian community events in both the United States and Canada and making radio and TV appearances. The role of a public intellectual appealed to him. Arguably, he made the greatest impact not with teaching, administrative work, or public involvement, but with his scholarship. As a historian, he was primarily interested in political and intellectual history. The defining features of Rudnytsky's historical writing were wide erudition (especially in European history), sophisticated presentation, and broad contextualization. Collections of his essays have appeared in Ukrainian (1973, 1994, 2019), English (1987), Russian (2007), and Polish (2012).1 Several of Rudnytsky's articles remain required reading in modern Ukrainian history.2 In 2019 the centenary of his birth was marked by many events: academic panels and conferences in Europe and North America, republication [End Page 298] of his historical essays and publication of his diaries in Ukraine, and last but not least a documentary about his life made by the creative team consisting of the Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Shatokhina and the historian Yuri Shapoval. The film, which is a part of their documentary series Rozsiani (Scattered) about twentieth-century Ukrainian émigrés, was originally premiered at several venues in Ukraine in fall 2019, shown on the Ukrainian television channel Espreso.TV in October 2019, and then released on YouTube in February 2020, cut down from two hours to ninety-nine minutes. The film appears to be based on three types of sources. First, Rudnytsky's own writings are quoted throughout the documentary. Second, the filmmakers conducted personal interviews with Rudnytsky's son, Peter L. Rudnytsky, with people who were Rudnytsky's colleagues, students or had simply met him in person – Jars Balan, Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Marco Carynnyk, John-Paul Himka, Raisa Ivanchenko, Zenon Kohut, Manoly Lupul, Myron Pyzyk, Roman Solchanyk, Frank Sysyn. The filmmakers also talked to researchers who worked either on Rudnytsky (Ernest Gyidel, Yaroslav Hrytsak) or his mother Milena (Myroslava Diadiuk). Third, they relied on audio, textual, and visual records from institutional and private archives. Most of these documents had never before been shown to the general public. The film covers Rudnytsky's family and educational background, the major milestones of his personal life and academic...