Turning the pages back... January 31, 1870 (01/26/97)

Turning the pages back...

January 31, 1870

Volodymyr Peretts was born in St. Petersburg on January 31, 1870. After completing his studies, and later lecturing at the university (1896-1903), he moved to Kyiv. Until 1914, he was a professor at Kyiv University, head of the Ukrainian Scientific Society's philological section and editor of its publication, the Zapysky.

In 1907, Peretts established the Seminar of Russian Philology and began work as its director. He instructed many of Ukraine's leading figures in scholarship and literature, including the neo-classicists Mykhailo Drai-Khmara and Pavlo Fylypovych.

Prolific in this early period, he published over 100 works on early Ukrainian (Rus') literature, drama and legends, virtually all in Ukrainian.

Viewing the period of the 14th to 18th centuries as an organic outgrowth of the Kyivan Rus' era, Peretts adhered to the philological school, concentrating on the form and structure of early literature, and insisting on a solid knowledge as a basis for interpretation of texts.

When Peretts moved back to St. Petersburg in 1914, he took the seminar with him. He did not sever all ties with the Ukrainian capital, however, and headed the All-Ukrainian Academy of Science Commission of Old Ukrainian Literature. He continued to publish, with more than 300 titles at career's end.

After the Bolsheviks came to power, Peretts continued his work, establishing the Leningrad Society of Researchers of Ukrainian History, Literature and Language, which was active from 1921 to 1933.

His opposition to Communist Party intervention in scholarship, as well as his insistence on the Ukrainian character of the early literature and traditions of Kyivan Rus' attracted the invidious attentions of the Stalinist regime. Escalating repressions resulted in his exile to Saratov, Russia, where Peretts died on September 24, 1935.

Source: "Peretts, Volodymyr," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

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