BOOK LAUNCH OF VOLUME 5 OF MYKHAILO HRUSHEVSKY’S HISTORY OF UKRAINE-RUS'
14 April 2020
Photo credit: Mykola Swarnyk
On 24 October 2019, the launch of the English translation of volume 5 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s monumental History of Ukraine-Rus' took place in Toronto at the elegant Old Mill Toronto. The English edition of Hrushevsky’s ten-volume History (in twelve books) is being prepared by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and is published by the CIUS Press. Volume 5 of the History is the eleventh book (the second last one) to be published within the scope of the Hrushevsky Translation Project (HTP).
Well-known political scientist John A. Armstrong once described Hrushevsky’s academic History of Ukraine-Rus' as crucial in the formation of the modern Ukrainian national identity. And prominent historian Thomas Noonan has referred to the Hrushevsky Translation Project at the CIUS as “one of North America's most important and ambitious publishing projects in East Slavic history.”
Volume 5 of the History deals with the socio-political and church organization and relations in the lands of Ukraine-Rus' in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. The main speaker at the Toronto launch was Most Rev. Borys Gudziak, Archbishop-Metropolitan for the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. Metropolitan Borys is also a well-known historian and the author of the book Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest, a seminal study of the Church Union of Brest of 1596.
Other speakers at the launch included Professor Frank E. Sysyn, director of the Peter Jacyk Centre and editor-in-chief of the Hrushevsky Translation Project; Uliana M. Pasicznyk, managing editor of volume 5 and the HTP; Nadia Jacyk, president of the Petro Jacyk Education Foundation; and Dr. Marko R. Stech, executive director of the CIUS Press.
HTP editor Tania Plawuszczak-Stech also hosts and produces the “Ukraine in the News with Tania Stech” section on the KONTAKT Ukrainian TV program (which airs nationally in Canada on OMNI TV and is archived on the KONTAKT YouTube channel). She has prepared a series of television interviews with participants of the volume 5 launch. These interviews can be viewed online:
- Interview with Prof. Frank Sysyn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRBIGpFeSWQ
- Interview with Metropolitan Borys Gudziak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24h--RUHRj8
- Interview with Dr. Marko R. Stech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ4UCqOJUwc
- Interview with Uliana Pasicznyk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOoihIZ77E
- Interview with Nadia Jacyk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6oeDRlZoGk
The English translation of the History of Ukraine-Rus' was made possible by the philanthropy of the late Mr. Peter Jacyk and the Petro Jacyk Education Foundation, now headed by Nadia Jacyk. Recent volumes of the History have been published with the assistance of the Temerty Foundation and the estate of Edward Brodacky. Preparation of volume 5 was funded by a generous donation from Dr. Maria Fischer-Slysh of Toronto in memory of her parents, Dr. Adolf Slyz and Olha Slyz.
This launch of volume 5 of Hrushevsky’s History was organized by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies; the Petro Jacyk Education Foundation; the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada; and the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at the University of Saint Michael’s College, University of Toronto.