From the History of Ukrainian Scientific Emigration: Experience of Adaptation, Professional Realization, and Everyday Life (late 1940s — early 1950s)
Dr. Tetiana Hoshko
Ukrainian Catholic University16.9.2025, 16:00
Library of the Center for Urban History
The situation in postwar Germany created both unique opportunities and enormous challenges for Ukrainian scholars. On the one hand, the American occupation zone allowed for a certain level of academic and cultural freedom, and on the other hand, Germany was a devastated land. In such circumstances, Ukrainian emigrant scholars set about rebuilding academic institutions.
The Archives of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in America in New York City houses the personal collection of Lev Okinshevych, a Ukrainian legal historian, member of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, and dean of the Law School of the Ukrainian Free University. Based on his correspondence, it is possible to reconstruct many pages of the life of Ukrainian emigrant scholars in the mid-twentieth century, to trace their attempts at professional realization and adaptation to new living conditions in Europe or America.
During the city seminar, the historian will present the developments of her forthcoming book, which will be an attempt to rethink the development of Ukrainian science in exile through the prism of the epistolary heritage of famous emigrant scholars. The topics to be covered in the monograph include the story of the survival of Ukrainian scholars in postwar Germany, the revival of the Ukrainian Catholic University, new research projects, and interpersonal conflicts and financial difficulties.
Examples will include the life strategies of Andriy Yakovliv, Lev Okinshevych, Volodymyr Kubiyovyč, Jaroslaw Padokh, and Lev Rebet. A separate aspect is the women's view of Ukrainian scientific emigration in the letters of Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko and Yelyzaveta Sosnova, both restrained and businesslike, and verbose, filled with details of private and everyday life, information about famous figures of Ukrainian science and culture.
Dr. Tetiana Hoshko
Ukrainian Catholic UniversityDoctor of History, Professor at the Department of History at the Ukrainian Catholic University. She graduated from the Faculty of History of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (1990), defended her PhD thesis on “Magdeburg Law of Central and Eastern Europe in the 13th-18th centuries in Ukrainian and Polish historiography” at the M.Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archaeology and Source Studies (1999), and her doctoral thesis “Anthropology of Cities and Municipal Law in the Russian Lands of the Crown of Poland in the XIV-First Half of the XVII Centuries” at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2019). She is the author of more than a hundred scientific and popular science articles, three monographs, and a textbook on the history of Ukraine in the Lithuanian-Polish period.
This Seminar will be held in a workshop format. Researchers are invited to discuss scholarly projects, research at various stages of development, and completed research that is being prepared for publication.
Participation in the Urban Seminar requires preliminary reading and discussion of the researcher's text. If you would like to join the Seminar, please email Maryana Mazurak (m.mazurak@lvivcenter.org), and we will send you the materials in advance.
Credits
Cover Image: From a letter by Dmytro Doroshenko to Lev Okinshevych (October 4, 1948) / Archive of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in America