Continuing our discussion of the Jewish component of Ukrainian cultural heritage, we turn to an article by Vira Ageyeva about Jeremiah Aizenshtock — a scholar whose life spanned several identities and historical eras.
Vira Ageyeva is a Doctor of Philology, a professor in the Volodymyr Morenets Department of Literary Studies, a writer, and a literary critic. She is a co-founder of the Kyiv Institute for Gender Studies, a recipient of the Shevchenko Prize and the Petro Mohyla Prize, and the author of numerous scholarly and popular science publications.
The article focuses on Jeremiah Aizenshtock, a man of Jewish descent who consciously chose Ukrainian studies as both his profession and his calling. In the 1920s, he became part of a generation that was building modern Ukrainian culture as an open project, one to which people of diverse backgrounds and experiences contributed.
The researcher demonstrates that for Aizenshtock, Ukrainian culture was not only a subject of scholarly interest but also a space for intellectual freedom. He worked with archives, studied Ukrainian literature, developed new methodological approaches, and contributed to the formation of modern literary studies.
“Jeremiah Aizenshtock is a figure in whom several identities and several histories intersect. Of Jewish descent, he consciously chose Ukrainian culture as his field of work, and in the 1920s, this choice was not merely academic but also ideological and political.”
At the same time, Aizenshtock’s biography serves as a reminder of the dramatic fate of an entire generation of Ukrainian intellectuals. In the 1930s, the Soviet authorities began rolling back cultural and scientific projects, dismantling institutions, and persecuting those who were shaping modern Ukrainian culture. After the war, both the Ukrainian and Jewish components of his identity came under attack.
Vira Ageyeva’s article invites us to take a broader view of the history of Ukrainian culture — as a collaborative endeavor involving many people of diverse backgrounds, united not by ethnicity or origin, but by a shared responsibility for the development of culture and science.
The full article will be available this summer following the online publication of the project’s Imagological Collection on the website.
This publication was produced as part of the project "Jewish Heritage in Ukraine: Interdisciplinary Reflections through the Lens of Archival Documents, Culture, History, and Literature", implemented by the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy with the support of UNESCO Ukraine and the European Union.
All publications are produced with the financial support of the European Union. Their content is the sole responsibility of the partners and does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union.