Simple Tribute to an Outstanding Figure

For a long time militant nationalists regarded Yuri Shevelov as a "rootless cosmopolitan" and "rotten aesthete,"  while the Communists branded him as a "nationalistic turncoat" and "fascist lackey."

Strangely, the man is not held in much esteem in independent Ukraine, either (suffice it to recall how his name was kept off the Shevchenko Prize lists). Narrow-minded ideologues, regardless of political affiliation, cannot forgive him his aristocratic courteous bearing, intellect, and ability to speak in terms of scientifically proven facts rather than ideological slogans. Last but not least, there is his undeniable philological authority and fame reaching over and above the limits of the epoch.

Ninety-year-old Yuri Shevelov publishes articles and is writing his memoirs. Two collections of articles, The Third Guard (1993) and Beyond and With Books (1998), finally appeared in print in Ukraine. Now is the turn of a three-volume collection, long since promise by Kharkiv's Folio Publishers, and a reprint of the brilliant monograph The Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900-1941): Its Condition and Status.

Incidentally, the jubilee soiree dedicated to one of the modern intellectual giants, Yuri Sheveliov-Sherekh (the latter being his long-standing literary nom de plume), took place last Thursday, but not at the Writers' Union or Academy of Sciences, and of course not at the Ukraine Palace, but in a small exhibition hall of Ukraine's Literary Museum. Such is the local tradition: the greater the talent the smaller the celebration's scale.