Omeljan Pritsak
Encyclopedia
Omeljan Pritsak was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century...

 Professor of Ukrainian History
History of Ukraine
The territory of Ukraine was a key center of East Slavic culture in the Middle Ages, before being divided between a variety of powers. However, the history of Ukraine dates back many thousands of years. The territory has been settled continuously since at least 5000 BC, and is also a candidate site...

 at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and the founder and first director (1973-1989) of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute is a research institute affiliated with Harvard University devoted to Ukrainian studies studying the history, culture, language, and politics of Ukraine. Other areas of study include Ukrainian literature, archaeology, art, economics, and anthropology...

.

Career

Pritsak began his academic career at the University of Lvov in interwar Poland
History of Poland (1918–1939)
The History of interwar Poland comprises the period from the re-recreation of the independent Polish state in 1918, until the joint Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II...

 where he studied Middle Eastern languages under local orientalists and became associated with the Shevchenko Scientific Society
Shevchenko Scientific Society
The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. Unlike the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine the society is a public organization that was reestablished in Ukraine in 1989 after almost 50 years of exile...

 and attended its seminar on Ukrainian history led by Ivan Krypiakevych
Ivan Krypiakevych
Ivan Krypiakevych was a leading historian of western Ukraine. He was a specialist on Ukrainian history of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, writing extensively on the social history of western Ukraine and the political history of the Ukrainian Cossacks, especially during the time of Hetman...

. After the Soviet annexation of Galicia, he moved to Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 where he briefly studied with the premier Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 orientalist, Ahatanhel Krymsky. During the war, Pritsak escaped to the west. He studied at the universities in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Göttingen
Georg-August University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen , known informally as Georgia Augusta, is a university in the city of Göttingen, Germany.Founded in 1734 by King George II of Great Britain and the Elector of Hanover, it opened for classes in 1737. The University of Göttingen soon grew in size and popularity...

, receiving a doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 from the latter, before teaching at the University of Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...

. In the 1960s, he moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, where he taught at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 for a while, before moving to Harvard at the invitation of the prominent linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...

, who was interested in proving the authenticity of the twelfth century "Song of Igor
The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.The title is occasionally translated as The Song of Igor's Campaign, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and The Lay of...

" through the use of oriental sources. At Harvard, he founded the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (1973), became the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History (1975), and started the journal, Harvard Ukrainian Studies (1977ff). In 1989, he retired from his Harvard professorship. After the emergence of an independent Ukraine in 1991, Pritsak returned to Kiev where he founded the Oriental Institute of the National Academy of Sciences and the journal Skhidnyi svit (The Oriental World). He spent his final years back in the United States, and died in Boston at the age of 87.

Main Interests

Pritsak was a medievalist who specialized in the use of orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...

al, especially Turkic
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, sources for the history of Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

, early modern Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, and the European Steppe region. He was also a student of Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

 and was familiar with Scandinavian sources for the history of Kievan Rus'. His magnum opus
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....

, The Origin of Rus, only one volume of which has appeared in English (1981), inclines toward, but does not totally adopt, a Normanist interpretation of Rus' origins. He saw Kievan Rus' as a multi-ethnic polity.

In addition to the early Rus', Pritsak's works focused on Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...

n nomad
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...

s and steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

 empires such as those created by the Bulgars
Bulgars
The Bulgars were a semi-nomadic who flourished in the Pontic Steppe and the Volga basin in the 7th century.The Bulgars emerge after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in the 5th century....

, Khazars
Khazars
The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...

, Pechenegs, and Kipchaks
Kipchaks
Kipchaks were a Turkic tribal confederation...

. However, he firmly rejected the "Eurasian" approach
Eurasianists
Eurasianism is a political movement within the primarily Russian emigre community.-Early 20th century:Eurasianists was a political movement in the Russian emigre community in the 1920s...

 to Ukrainian and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n history and would have nothing to do with its Russian nationalist postulates.

Ukrainian Historian

Unlike his predecessors Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century...

, Dmytro Doroshenko
Dmytro Doroshenko
Dmytro Doroshenko was a prominent Ukrainian political figure during the revolution of 1917-1918 and a leading Ukrainian emigre historian during the inter-war period.-Political career:...

, and Ivan Krypiakevych
Ivan Krypiakevych
Ivan Krypiakevych was a leading historian of western Ukraine. He was a specialist on Ukrainian history of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, writing extensively on the social history of western Ukraine and the political history of the Ukrainian Cossacks, especially during the time of Hetman...

, who wrote national histories or histories of the Ukrainian people, Pritsak followed the Ukrainian historian of Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 background, Viacheslav Lypynsky, in proposing the ideal of writing a "territorialist" history of Ukraine which would include the Polish, Turkic, and other peoples that have inhabited the country from ancient times. This idea was later taken up by his younger contemporary Paul Magocsi, who was for some time an associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Institute.

Politics

Pritsak was a political conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 and during his youth in eastern Galicia under the Polish Republic
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...

, and later also during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 was a supporter of the conservative "Hetman
Hetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....

ite" or monarchist movement among Ukrainians. This led him to criticize Hrushevsky's political radicalism and historical populism, although, ironically, he claimed that Hrushevsky's "school" of history was being continued at Harvard. Also during the Cold War, Pritsak became prominent in the movement towards Ukrainian-Jewish reconciliation
History of the Jews in Ukraine
Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions. While at times they flourished, at other times they faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discriminatory...

.

Published works

  • The origins of the Old Rus' weights and monetary systems: Two studies in Western Eurasian metrology and numismatics in the seventh to eleventh centuries. Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998.
  • From Kievan Rus' to modern Ukraine: Formation of the Ukrainian nation (with Mykhailo Hrushevski and John Stephen Reshetar). Cambridge, Mass.: Ukrainian Studies Fund, Harvard University, 1984.
  • Khazarian Hebrew
    Hebrew language
    Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

     documents of the tenth century. (with Golb, Norman Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
  • "The Polovcians and Rus'" (Journal Article in Archivum Eurasiae medii aevi), 1982.
  • The origin of Rus'. Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1981.
  • Studies in medieval Eurasian history London: Variorum Reprints, 1981.
  • On the writing of history in Kievan Rus. Cambridge, Mass.: Ukrainian Studies Fund, Harvard University, 1980.
  • "The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism
    Judaism
    Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

    ." (Journal Article in Harvard Ukrainian studies, 1978)
  • The Pechenegs: A Case of Social and Economic Transformation (Journal Article in Archivum Eurasiae medii aevi), 1975
  • "Two Migratory Movements in the Eurasian Steppe in the 9th-11th Centuries". (Conference Paper in Proceedings : Proceedings of the 26th International Congress of Orientalists, New Delhi 1964, Vol. 2)
  • The Decline of the Empire of the Oghuz Yabghu (Journal Article in Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States), 1952.
  • Die Bulgarische Fürstenliste, Wiesbaden 1955.

Further reading

  • Keenan, Edward L. "Omeljan Pritsak (1919–2006): [Obituary]", Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol. 7, No. 4. (2006), pp. 931–936.
  • Oleksander Dombrovsky, "Pamiati Omeliana Pritsaka (Spohady)," [In Memory of Omeljan Pritsak: Recollections] Ukrainskyi istoryk, XLIII, 1-3 (2006), pp. 228-37 (in Ukrainian)
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