Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
Publications Catalog

Recent and Forthcoming Titles

 

The Povest' vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis

Donald Ostrowski, ed. and coll., with David Birnbaum and Horace G. Lunt

The Tale of Bygone Years (Povest' vremennykh let) is the most important source for the history of early Rus'. Full of stories of grand princes and saints, monks and knightly retinues, this chronicle compilation has been the bedrock of modern interpretations of the history, ethos, and religious traditions of Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians alike. It has also been a source of controversy, with competing redactions and interpretations of the Old East Slavic language in which it was written. Ostrowski's massive undertaking provides scholars and general readers with the five oldest redactions, three more modern redactions, three later interpolations, and his own final interpretation of the Povest'.

 

Volume X in the Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature: Texts Series

September 2003. 3 pts. 2341 pp., (clothbound) ISBN 0-916458-91-1 (HUP/OSTPOV) $125.00.

Josef Dobrovsky and the Origins of the Igor' Tale

Edward L. Keenan

This controversial and ground-breaking book revists the origins of one of the most beloved works of east Slavic literature, the Slovo o polku Igoreve (the Igor' Tale). Keenan delves into the history of the first published edition of the Tale in order to demonstrate that the text is not an authentic twelfth-century document. Rather, Keenan argues that it is a product of the late eighteenth century, created by the Bohemian scholar Josef Dobrovsky. According to Keenan, only Dobrovsky, the greatest Slavist of his time, possessed the knowledge and ability needed to create a work as unique as the Tale.

At the center of this work is Keenan's meticulous, almost word-by-word analysis of the language of the Tale. By proposing that Dobrovsky is the author, Keenan is able to illuminate passages of the text that have remained opaque despite over two centuries of analysis by scholars. Keenan's thought-provoking insights into the creation and publication of the Tale will spark scholarly debate for many years.

Edward L. Keenan is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History at Harvard University and Director of Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. A specialist in medieval Muscovite history and the cultural history of the East Slavs, he has also served at Harvard as the director of the Russian Research Center, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and chair of the History Department. His earlier works include "The Kurbskii-Groznyi apocrypha: the seventeenth-century genesis of the 'correspondence' attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), and a recent book of essays, "Rosiis'ki istorychni mify" (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2001).

November 2003. 570 pp. ISBN 0-916458-96-2 (clothbound) (HUP/KEEJOS) $49.95.

Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography

Serhii Plokhy

Tsars and Cossacks explores the ways in which Ukrainian Cossacks used icon painting to navigate not only their relationship vis-à-vis God, but also vis-à-vis the Russian tsar. Could Emperor Peter I and his adversary in the Battle of Poltava (1709) — the Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa — be depicted in the same icon? Why did the Cossack colonels commission icons with the portraits of their tsars, but not of the own Cossack leaders, the hetmans? Could a Catholic king be portrayed in an Orthodox icon? Why are the Prussian tsars and Orthodox hierarchs missing on some of the Zaporozhian Cossack icons? In this groundbreaking study, Dr. Plokhy provides answers to these and many other questions pertaining to the political and religious culture of Ukrainian Cossackdom, as reflected in the Cossack era paintings, icons and woodcuts. By encouraging the iconography to "speak", Tsars and Cossacks helps to broaden and deepen our understanding of Ukrainian iconography, as well as Russian imperial political culture.

Serhii Plokhy received his doctorate in history from Kyiv University in 1990. He was the chair of the Department of World History at Dnipropetrovsk University and conducted research at the Institute of Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy Sciences of Ukraine, where he headed the Department of the History of Culture. He currently serves as the Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard. He is the author of The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Available now. 101 pp., illus.; ISBN 0-916458-95-4 (paperback) (HURI) $18.95.

The Ottoman Survey Register of Podolia (ca. 1681). Defter-i Mufassal-i Eyalet-i-Kamaniçe

Dariusz Kolodziejczyk

The Ottoman survey registers (defter-i mufassal) are recognized as unparalleled sources on the demographic, economic, toponymic, onomastic, and linguistic characteristics of the regions for which they were made. The survey register for the province of Kamanice (the name used for the region of Podolia and city of Kamjanec' which the Ottomans conquered in 1672) is the only surviving survey register of an ethnic Ukrainian territory. With the publication of this survey, Podolia has the potential of becoming in several ways better known than any other region of Ukraine not only at that time. The defter aids the study of the disciplines noted above and is an invaluable source for students of economic history, especially those interested in the rural economies of Eastern Europe.

The full text of the defter is given in transcription in the first part, with a full facsimile edition given in the second part. All narrative documents are fully translated in appendices, and narrative segments of the registry portion of the defter are fully translated in the notes. Commentary is found in extensive notes and an introduction. The Ottoman Survey Register provides important new information on the Ottomans and their subjects living on Ukrainian territory. The first part also includes important interpretive maps keyed to the register and indices and glossaries.

2004. 2 parts,XVIII + 1034 pp., maps. ISBN 0-916458-78-4 (cloth) (HUP/KOLOTT) $75.00 (set). Ottoman Documents Pertaining to Ukraine and the Black Sea Countries, 3.

[Co-published with the Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine]

Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of Culture

John Czaplicka, ed.

Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of CultureThis book brings together essays by scholars from a wide range of disciplines: historiography, architecture, literary history and criticism, urban planning, and cultural history. Several of the essays were presented as papers at a conference jointly sponsored by the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. Others are invited papers, reflecting the diversity of cultures that come together in this vibrant city, known variously over the centuries as Leopolis, Lwów, Lvov, Lemberg, and L'viv. At times violent, always passionate, these confluences of cultures have shaped a city that now stands at a most strategic location between East and West.

December 2004. Approx. 365 pp. illus., index (cloth) ISBN 0-916458-97-0 (HUP/CAZLVI) $39.95.

Rus' Restored: Selected Writings of Meletij Smotryc'kyj (1610–1630)

David A. Frick, trans. and annot.

The early seventeenth century was a time of great upheaval for the Polish-Lithuanian state, as the Orthodox Ruthenians struggles to maintain their religious self-determination in the face of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. This book presents translations of polemical works written during this period by Meletij Smotryc'kyj, one of the leading spokesmen for Ruthenian renewal.

Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature
English Translations Series, vol. 7
December 2004. Approx. 800 pp., index (cloth) ISBN 0-916458-64-4 (HUP/FRIRUS) $32.50.

 


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