Harvard University holds memorial service for Omeljan Pritsak (12/31/06)

Harvard University holds memorial service for Omeljan Pritsak

by Peter Woloschuk

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Harvard University held its official memorial service for Prof. Omeljan Pritsak in the Appleton Chapel of the Memorial Church on October 20. Dr. Pritsak died at the end of May; at the time of his death, Harvard University had marked his passing with the tolling of all of its bells.

These commemorations marked the first time that the university had paid tribute in such a way to a Ukrainian.

Dr. Pritsak had served at the university for almost 25 years as a professor of linguistics and Turkology, as the first director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), and as the first Mykhailo S. Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History.

HURI was closed for the afternoon in honor of the commemoration of its founder.

At 2 p.m. Harvard administrators, colleagues, staff, noted scholars, former students from across North America, representatives of both the Boston and national Ukrainian communities, and Turkey's honorary consul in Boston, Erkut Gomulu, filled the chapel for the 90-minute service. Also present were Harvard Profs. Horace Lunt and Richard Pipes, and Prof. Wyktor Weintraub's widow, Marlena Weintraub, who all served on the first Ukrainian Studies Committee.

Prof. Michael S. Flier, current director of HURI and Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, gave opening remarks and also served as master of ceremonies.

"Prof. Pritsak will always be remembered for his four hallmarks - erudition, vision, energy and faith or belief," Prof. Flier pointed out. "He was able to take a vision of a comprehensive approach to Ukraine that had been lacking in contemporary scholarship and make it a reality through sheer perseverance."

"Understanding deeply how Ukrainian studies had been stifled by various oppressive governments, Prof. Pritsak developed a vision of what Ukrainian studies could be in a free academic setting," Prof. Flier continued. "He envisioned a humanistic approach to Ukrainian studies coordinated by a research center linked with a mandate for teaching courses in the three areas that he ascertained as crucial: history, literature and philology. He stressed the need of developing scholarly projects in each area and of publishing the foundational texts crucial to an understanding of the origins and development of Ukrainian history and culture."

"It was Prof. Pritsak who created the institute as it exists today with its seminar series, three endowed chairs, a vibrant series of publications, including the journal Harvard Ukrainian Studies, the Harvard Library of early Ukrainian literature, and the more than 80,000 volumes of Ucrainica to support teaching and research," Prof. Flier said.

"However, Omeljan Pritsak was not just a dreamer," Professor Flier added. "He worked tirelessly with the Ukrainian Studies Fund to raise sufficient capital to make his visions reality. To do this he traveled all over the United States and Canada to share his ideas with the Ukrainian community and to convince them of the urgent need to get going immediately. And they responded as no other ethnic group has. Prof. Pritsak dreamed big dreams. He worked long hours. He overcame insurmountable obstacles."

Next to speak were Prof. Edward Keenan, director of Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Center in Washington; George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Cyzevskkyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature; Roman Szporluk, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Research Professor of Ukrainian History; Richard Frye, Aga Khan professor of Iranian, emeritus; Lubomyr Hajda, associate director of HURI; Frank Sysyn, director of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research; and the Rev. Dr. Borys Gudziak, rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. The speakers paid personal tributes and offered insights into Dr. Pritsak's life, work and unique personality.

The chapel organist, Harry Lyn Huff, played selections from J.S. Bach as prelude, interlude and postlude.

"Prof. Pritsak generated hundreds of scholarly works and professional articles," Prof. Keenan said. "However, he will be most remembered for the fact that he created out of air, as it were, a full-blown, full-service Ukrainian academic center that has come to set the standard for everyone."

"Omeljan Pritsak was a very complex individual," Prof. Grabowicz stressed. "He was a teacher, a mentor, a pioneer, a builder of institutions. In many ways he was the embodiment of an heroic age. He was a founding father. He enabled Ukrainian studies to break out of the marginalized existence, and, for the first time since the late 18th century, take their legitimate place in academia."

"Often individuals influence the course of history and the development of events," Prof. Szporluk pointed out. "It is clear that Prof. Pritsak was not only a great scholar and builder but he was also a great strategist. He knew how to win over influential leaders and make powerful intellectual allies. At Harvard, the members of the first Ukrainian Studies Committtee included noted Byzantinist Ihor Sevcenko, Medieval Muscovite Historian Edward Keenan, Slavic Philologist Horace Lunt, Russian and Soviet History Professor Richard Pipes, political science Prof. Adam Ulan, and professor of Polish literature Wyktor Weintraub. Among his other supporters were a future president of Harvard University, the Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitan of Winnipeg, and a member of the National Security Council. He even treated the fund raising that he did for HURI as a way of educating the Ukrainian community in the United States and Canada."

"Prof. Pritsak also believed that intellectual creativity could be more influential than direct political activity, that theoretical work could often accomplish more in the world than the practical, and that the development of scholarship could and does influence events," Prof. Szporluk concluded, "and we have seen how the events in Ukraine over the last two decades have more than justified his belief."

"I first met Omeljan Pritsak in 1951," said Prof. Frye, "when he was just beginning his academic career and even then I was struck by the scope of his knowledge. His areas of interest ranged from Turkey through central Asia to the Far East and his linguistic ability covered a vast number of languages, both ancient and modern. A number of his works, like those on the Bulgars of the Middle Volga and the Karakhanid dynasty of Central Asia, are still the classical reference sources."

"Omeljan was truly a renaissance man," Prof. Frye concluded, his voice breaking. "He was my friend ... he was one of my best friends."

"Omeljan Pritsak's scholarship, preserved in his published legacy of several hundred titles, is an ongoing gift to the world, open and available to all - today and for future generations," said Dr. Hajda. "He was an extraordinary teacher, with an idiosyncratic teaching style that his students will never forget. In a unique fashion he viewed his own attainments not as a mark of personal intellectual superiority, but as proof that with some aptitude, the right attitude and a lot of application nothing was impossible. This was the hallmark of his expectations of his students."

"There is a curious prehistory to my acquaintance with Prof. Pritsak," Dr. Hajda said. "When I told my parents about my first meeting with him, my mother remembered an incident from her youth in Ternopil when she attended the 'Ridna Shkola' (Ukrainian) girls' gymnasium and Omeljan Pritsak, a couple of years her junior, the men's First Gymnasium (a Polish school, the Ukrainian boys' gymnasium had been closed by the authorities). The two schools shared a teacher of Polish literature, an ethnic Pole - even in the 'Ridna Shkola' Ukrainians were not allowed to teach the subject - a Prof. Rybinski, who also was a source of information on the boys for his female students. On one occasion he remarked: 'I know young ladies are not interested in such things, but I have one brilliant student' " - referring to Prof. Pritsak. "You Ukrainians will someday have a great man in him."

Dr. Sysyn spoke next. "I have been walking around the Harvard campus and revisiting some of the places where Prof. Pritsak put the institute and us together ... his small study turned meeting room in the Widener Library ... the seminar room with its magnificent table ... his office at HURI. I have done a lot of thinking about Prof. Pritsak and I believe that his greatest gift was that he brought us all together and gave us the opportunity to launch our careers and to develop our interest in Ukrainian studies. Over the years his students have taken major academic positions all over the world and today occupy some very significant academic positions. And we owe it all to him and the teaching that came from his encyclopedic knowledge and insight."

The Rev. Dr. Gudziak, also a former student of Prof. Pritsak, concluded the encomiums and reflected on the fact that Prof. Pritsak also had much to be grateful for "... grateful for the fact that he lived 86 productive years when more than half of the children born at the time in Galicia did not live to adulthood, grateful for the fact that he survived the war and was able to continue his studies, grateful for graces received and shared, grateful for his colleagues, grateful for his students, grateful for his late first wife Nina and his daughter Irene, and grandchildren, grateful for the company of his wife Larysa in his later years, and grateful for the care of his doctors in his last days."

He then bid a final farewell using the words of commitment from the Ukrainian burial service asking God to be merciful and grant a place of peace and light with the righteous as well as eternal memory.

"Vichnaya pamiat. Vichnaya pamiat. Vichnaya pamiat." Following the memorial service a memorial reception ("pomynky") was held in the reading room of the Harvard Faculty Club. Prof. Flier welcomed everyone and stressed that both the memorial service and the reception were "a celebration of the life and scholarship of Prof. Pritsak." He then invited a number of additional speakers to take their turn at the lectern.

Dr. Zenon Kohut, director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, spoke first and reflected on Prof. Pritsak's enthusiasm and support for his students. He was followed by Dr. Oksana Grabowicz, an anthropologist and associate of HURI, who talked about the support that she received from Prof. Pritsak in her academic growth and development, and Dr. Mubeyyin Altan, Prof. Pritsak's last doctoral student at the Institute for Oriental Studies at the Academy of Sciences (Akademia Nauk) in Kyiv and co-founder and president of the International Association of Crimea and the former editor of the Crimean Review, who spoke of Prof. Pritsak's abiding interest in and support for the Crimean Tatars. He also pointed out that Prof. Pritsak's academic career came full circle when he began to re-establish the Oriental Institute in Kyiv with its branch in Crimea in the years before his death.

Prof. Larysa Pritsak, widow of Prof. Pritsak, and historian of Kozak Ukraine, came to the lectern last. She announced that Prof. Pritsak's entire library with its collections of books, manuscripts, art and correspondence would be going to the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and would be housed together in a specially prepared repository. She said she hoped that the gift would enable the university to establish a research center to serve as the foundation for a department of Oriental studies.

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