OBITUARY: Prof. George S.N. Luckyj, leading scholar in Ukrainian studies in North America (12/09/01)

OBITUARY: Prof. George S.N. Luckyj, leading scholar in Ukrainian studies in North America

by Roman Senkus and Bohdan Klid

TORONTO - Prof. George Stephen Nestor Luckyj, a pioneering and towering figure in post-war Ukrainian and Slavic studies in the Western world, particularly in Canada, died in Toronto on November 22 following a brief illness. He was 82.

In addition to his many accomplishments as a literary scholar, Prof. Luckyj played a major role in the establishment and early years of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) and the Canadian Association of Slavists (CAS). He also served as the first editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers (1956-1961), the journal of CAS.

During his long career as a lecturer and then professor in the University of Toronto's department of Slavic languages and literatures (1952-1984), he helped turn that department into a leading center of Slavic studies in North America in his capacity as chairman (1957-1961).

George S.N. Luckyj was born in 1919 in the village of Yanchyn (now Ivanivka) in Peremyshliany county near Lviv. He was the son of Ostap Lutskyi, a Western Ukrainian modernist poet, cooperative leader, politician and member of the Polish Sejm and Senate, and of Irena Smal-Stotska, the daughter of Stepan Smal-Stotskyi, the well-known Slavic philologist, Bukovynian community leader and Austrian parliamentarian. He thus had the fortune of growing up in a nationally conscious family that also held dear the highest values of European culture and civilization.

After graduating from the Academic Gymnasium in Lviv in 1937, he traveled to Italy and Germany, and studied German literature at the University of Berlin. On his father's advice, he left Berlin for England on the eve of World War II to attend a summer school at Cambridge University. Soon after the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine in 1939 his father was arrested by the NKVD and perished in a Soviet concentration camp in 1941.

In England Mr. Luckyj soon enrolled at the University of Birmingham, where he received a master's degree and met Moira McShane, his wife to be and his closest intellectual collaborator. He joined the British army in December 1943 and served as a Russian interpreter for British military intelligence in occupied post-war Germany. There his Anglophile sentiments were undermined by his experience of the brutal repatriation of Soviet refugees and deserters and the complicity of British authorities in that inhumane chapter in post-war history.

Demobilized in 1947, that year he accepted a position to teach English literature at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and immigrated to Canada with his wife and twin daughters. Two years later he left Saskatoon to pursue a doctorate at Columbia University in New York.

It was during his doctoral studies that George Luckyj made the first of his many important contributions to Ukrainian studies. His Ph.D. dissertation (1953) became the pioneering monograph "Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917-1934" (1956; revised ed., 1990). In New York he also became involved in the work of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., a scholarly institution founded by postwar émigré scholars, serving as the founding editor (1951-1953) and translator of the academy's Annals.

From that time on, George Luckyj devoted his intellectual energies to informing the English-speaking world about Ukrainian literature and civilization, and cultural and political issues. With the help of his wife, Moira, he became the most prolific English-language translator of Ukrainian monographs and works of Ukrainian literature in the 20th century.

His translations include "The Hunters and the Hunted" by Ivan Bahriany (1954, 1956); Iwan Majstrenko's "Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of Ukrainian Communism" (1954); Elie Borschak's "Hryhor Orlyk: France's Cossack General" (1956); Dmytro Doroshenko's "Survey of Ukrainian Historiography" (1957); Mykola Khvyliovy's "Stories from the Ukraine" (1960); Hryhory Kostiuk's "Stalinist Rule in the Ukraine: A Decade of Mass Terror" (1960); George Y. Shevelov's "Syntax of Modern Literary Ukrainian" (1963); "A Little Touch of Drama" by Valerian Pidmohylny (1972); Panteleimon Kulish's "Black Council" (1973); Mykola Kulish's "Sonata Pathètique" (1975); Yevhen Sverstiuk's "Clandestine Essays" (1976); and Pavlo Zaitsev's "Taras Shevchenko: A Life" (1988).

Other works of Ukrainian literature in English edited by Prof. Luckyj include "Four Ukrainian Poets" (1969), "Modern Ukrainian Short Stories" (1973); and Mykhailo Kotsiubyns'kyi's "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors"(1981).

As a literary scholar, Prof. Luckyj is best known for two seminal monographs: the aforementioned "Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917-1934," and "Between Gogol and Shevchenko: Polarity in the Literary Ukraine, 1798-1847" (1971), a now classic study of the Ukrainian Romantic generation.

Just prior to his retirement he wrote the monograph "Panteleimon Kulish: A Sketch of His Life and Times" (1983).

Prof. Luckyj also wrote many articles on Ukrainian literature, Soviet literary politics and dissent, and individual Ukrainian and Russian writers for scholarly journals, encyclopedias and other reference books. He served as the editor of the section on Ukrainian literature in Volume 1 of Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia (1963).

Prof. Luckyj believed in and lobbied for a publicly funded institute of Ukrainian studies in Canada, and was involved in the creation of the CIUS in 1976. Upon its founding, he was appointed associate director in charge of its Toronto office, and was closely associated with the Institute during its early years.

As associate director, Prof. Luckyj implemented a plan to publish several university textbooks in Ukrainian language and literature. Among them were two books that he edited: "Vaplitianskyi Zbirnyk" (1977), an important collection of archival documents on the most important Ukrainian writers' group of the 1920s; and "Shevchenko and the Critics" (1980), a major collection of articles in English translation about Ukraine's national poet.

At CIUS, Prof. Luckyj also founded the Journal of Ukrainian Graduate Studies (now Journal of Ukrainian Studies), and served as its faculty advisor and de facto editor-in-chief until 1982.

The most important project that Prof. Luckyj helped initiate at CIUS was the preparation and publication of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine (five volumes, 1984-1993). He served as its English-language editor until 1982. That same year he resigned from his position as associate director of the CIUS, and in 1984 he retired from the University of Toronto.

Following retirement, Prof. Luckyj's intellectual output increased. He continued to write entries for encyclopedias and other articles on Ukrainian literature. He also edited "Before the Storm: Soviet Ukrainian Fiction of the 1920s," translated by Yuri Tkacz (1986), and served as the literary editor of the monthly journal Suchasnist' (1986-1988). From 1988 he published 13 books that he wrote, translated, compiled or edited; in addition to his translation of the above-mentioned classic biography of Shevchenko, they include four textbooks: "Young Ukraine: The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 1845-1847" (1991); "Ukrainian Literature in the Twentieth Century: A Reader's Guide" (1992), revised as "An Overview of the Twentieth Century" in Dmytro Cyzevskyj's "History of Ukrainian Literature," second edition (1997), which Prof. Luckyj edited, as he did the first edition in 1975; "Towards an Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology," coedited with Ralph Lindheim (1996).

In his last years, Prof. Luckyj concentrated on writing in a popular vein, producing the biographies "Shevchenko's Unforgotten Journey" (1996); "The Anguish of Mykola Hohol, a.k.a. Nikolai Gogol" (1997); and "Seven Lives: Vignettes of Ukrainian Writers in the Nineteenth Century" (1999). He also contributed occasional commentaries on Ukrainian social and cultural issues to the Kyiv journal Suchasnist and daily newspaper Den. In 1999 and 2000 he published his memoirs in two volumes in Kyiv.

Despite his many achievements, Prof. Luckyj did not receive the accolades one would have expected. In 1989 a Festschrift in his honor, "In Working Order: Essays Presented to G. S. N. Luckyj," was published as a volume of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies by CIUS. In 1999 he received the Antonovych Prize in recognition of his works on major Ukrainian literary figures - in particular his writings on Gogol (his "Between Gogol and Shevchenko" was published in Ukrainian translation under the title "Mizh Hoholem i Shevchenkom" "in Kyiv in 1998) and of his great contribution to the dissemination of knowledge about Ukrainian literature in the West.

As a teacher, Prof. Luckyj introduced many undergraduate students to the complexities of Ukrainian literature and culture. To more advanced students, he gave invaluable insights into the relationship between literature and politics, and nationalism and literature. He was known to his many students as an erudite gentleman who was tolerant of other points of view.

Prof. Luckyj leaves behind his wife, Moira; daughters Natalie, Anna, and Christina; his sister Marta Spyra, two grandchildren, and other family members. Private funeral services were in accordance with his wishes. He will be dearly missed also by many colleagues, friends and students; his legacy in Ukrainian and Slavic studies will be an enduring one. Donations may be made in Prof. Luckyj's memory to the George S.N. Luckyj Translation Prize Fund, Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, 2336A Bloor St. W., Suite 205, Toronton, Ontario, M6S 1P3.

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