Jaroslaw Pelenski

What should be the relationship between Ukrainians at home and in the diaspora? Right now … there are greater opportunities for open communication between Ukrainians from Ukraine and the diaspora. In particular, in the academic, cultural, and to some extent social spheres, such ties should be established and maintained. They will help us better understand and evaluate development trends in Ukraine, inform our countrymen about what is happening in the Ukrainian diaspora, and open up access to scientific and cultural centers in the Western world, particularly for Ukrainian scientists and cultural figures.

Jaroslaw Pelenski

Jaroslaw Pelenski was a Ukrainian historian and political scientist, professor, member of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, director of the Institute of East European Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and long-time president of the Institute of East European Studies at the Lypynsky Institute in the United States.

He was born on April 12, 1929 in Warsaw. He studied at the Universities of Würzburg (1948–1949) and Munich (1950–1955).
He defended his doctoral dissertations on the following topics: “Ukrainian National Thought in the Light of the Works of Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Vyacheslav Lypynsky” at the University of Munich (1957) and “Muscovite Imperial Claims to the Kazan Khanate: A Case Study in the Emergence of Imperial Ideology” (1968) at Columbia University.
He worked as an assistant professor of German language and literature at King’s College (1958–1961), an assistant professor of history at the American University in Washington (1964–1967), and a professor of history at the University of Iowa (1967–1998). He edited the journal-almanac Vidnova (1984–1987). Since 1987, he had been President of the V. K. Lypynsky East European Research Institute, Inc. in Philadelphia, USA. Chairman of the O. and T. Antonovych Foundation (1987). Since 1992, he had been a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He also was a member of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences and the Shevchenko Scientific Society.
Pelenski was fluent in German, Polish, English, Ukrainian, Russian, and read Church Slavonic, Latin, and French.
He was the author of works on the history of Eastern Europe of the late Middle Ages and early modern times, Ukrainian-Polish relations, Ukrainian socio-political thought of the twentieth century and political science, in particular, studies on V. Lypynsky, reviews of Ukrainian Soviet historiography of the 1950s and 1960s, history of relations between the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Kazan Khanate in the fourteenth century: Conquest and Imperial Ideology, 1438-1560s” (“Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560s), published in 1974.
Pelenski edited books in Ukrainian, in particular, on the legacy of Vyacheslav Lypynsky: “Ukraine at the Turn of the Century 1657–1659” by V. Lypynsky (Philadelphia, 1991), a collection of articles and materials “Vyacheslav Lypynsky: Historical and Political Heritage and Modern Ukraine” (Kyiv-Philadelphia, 1995), “Letters to Brothers Farmers” by V. Lypynsky (Kyiv-Philadelphia, 1995), “Vyacheslav Lypynsky: Correspondence”.
Jaroslaw Pelenski died on February 20, 2022, in New York.