“He Was His Wife”: Ahatanhel Krymsky's Queer Life

A lecture by Alex Averbuch, Collegiate Fellow, National Center for Institutional Diversity, Assistant Professor of Ukrainian Literature and Culture, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan.

Moderated by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed, Preceptor in Ukrainian, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.

IN-PERSON and ONLINE via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online. 

About the Lecture

To this day, the relationship between the major Ukrainian modernist author Ahatanhel Krymsky and his student and secretary Mykola Levchenko – in reality, an intimate one – is referred to in both scholarly and popular discourse as that of “father and adopted son.” This attempt to “sanitize” Krymsky’s biography stems from the Soviet-era silencing of his sexuality, which has profoundly obscured its reflections in his writings, such that even now, much of the interpretation of Krymsky remains amorphous and even gossipy. Drawing on both published works and previously unrevealed archival sources, Prof. Averbuch will discuss this and other of Krymsky’s same-sex relationships that are queerly reflected in his muddled textuality. The speaker will engage with Krymsky’s photographs and diaries, correspondence with lovers, and negotiations with the authorities related to his private life. The talk will supplement the meager existing documentation of his biography, but also, more broadly, will help clarify our picture of queer life in the pre- and early-Soviet period in Ukraine. [Image credit: A. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies.]

About the Speaker

Alex Averbuch is a scholar, poet, and translator. He is currently an LSA collegiate fellow with the National Center for Institutional Diversity and an assistant professor of Ukrainian literature and culture in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Previously he was a Killam postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Davis Center and Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. His research explores propaganda, otherization, gender and sexuality, material culture, epistolarity, photography, theatricality and performance, translation, and creative writing. He is the author of three books of poetry and an array of over sixty selections of literary translations between Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian, and English.

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This event is organized by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.

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