The scholar, historian, and public advocate: the contributions of Paul Robert Magocsi to our understanding of Ukraine and Central Europe

Abstract

In a recent reflective essay written on his dual role as a scholar and public advocate, Paul Robert Magocsi with self-deprecation described himself as a loser on the margins. The sentiment of loss came with his emotional attachment to the wrong baseball team (the Dodgers rather than the Yankees) (“The Scholar as Nation-Builder”). What is clear, however, is that Magocsi is no loser in academia. My esteemed colleagues in this symposium are echoing what has become incontrovertible: Magocsi is a towering figure in Ukrainian Studies.

Keywords:

• Ukraine
• Magocsi
• Central Europe

Notes

Now available in a second and expanded edition: A History of Ukraine: The Lands and Its Peoples.

For a lively account of the controversy, see Chapter XI (“The Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto (1977–82)”) of Manoly R. Lupul, The Politics of Multiculturalism: A Ukrainian-Canadian Memoir. Lupul, the founding director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, found himself in the middle of the storm.

The Chair has since received a significant endowment and has been renamed, in Fall 2010, the John Yaremko Chair of Ukranian Studies.

In George Grabowicz succinct words: “The right of self-determination, particularly of collectives, is immanent and inalienable. If people feel they are different, they are.” Back in the 1980s, however, this simple understanding of constructed identities was not prevalent. When my former McGill undergraduate teacher Michael Brecher stated in class that “The Palestinians are a nation because they think they are one,” the argument was a revelation to me.

This is the conclusion of his major study on the topic: The Shaping of a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus': 1848–1948.

In On the Making of Nationalities There is No End, Vol. I: Carpatho-Rusyns in Europe and North America (360), Magocsi wrote: “[W]hether these building blocks [needed to create a nationality – language, historical ideology, publications, cultural organizations, theaters] will be fully constructed … and, most importantly, whether the masses themselves will embrace the idea of a distinct Rusyn nationality remain open questions.”