Ukrainian Research Institute’s publishing activity at Harvard traces its origins back to the Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies (HSUS), established in 1970, three years before the founding of the Ukrainian Research Institute itself. Since its inception, the primary mission of HURI Publications has been the encouragement and dissemination of the highest caliber of scholarship in the field of Ukrainian studies. Throughout the Institute’s existence, the understanding of "Ukrainian studies" has been a broad one, and the level of excellence within its publication series has been uniformly high. HURI books have received plaudits from scholars around the world; HURI monographs and translations now form core resources for many courses on Ukrainian studies in Anglophone schools and universities. HURI books examine Ukrainian topics through the prism of a wide range of disciplines, including history, literature, philology, religious studies, art history, Oriental studies, gender studies, the social sciences, and anthropology. Broader studies have dealt with aspects of Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Turkey, Russia, and the Black Sea littoral. Ninety-one volumes have appeared so far in the fifty years of publications activity.
The Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies
There has been a variety of subseries under the general rubric of HSUS. The original Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies appeared in print until 1978. Thereafter, the Series no longer numbered its volumes and instead designated two new series of HURI publications: the Monograph Series, which was devoted to original scholarship, and the Sources and Documents Series, which was devoted to the reprinting and interpretation of archival documents and conference proceedings. The first volume published under this new arrangement (and with the Institute's own ISBN, indicating its status as a publisher) was Nonconformity and Dissent in the Ukrainian SSR, 1955-1975: An Annotated Bibliography, compiled by George Liber and Anna Mostovych. These two subseries were merged under the general heading “Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies” in 1992 to simplify bibliographic reference to the Institute's publications. Other early publishing activities carried out by HSUS included occasional papers (essays), the series Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies, under which Patricia Grimsted’s Trophies of War and Empire was published in 2001, and a reprint series for articles of special merit by Institute associates that appeared in non-Institute publications. The Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies also has collaborated with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies on several publications.
During the late 1980s, we began several new projects for HSUS. One was the publication of the series Renovatio with the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples, Italy. Ihor Ševčenko’s Byzantium and the Slavs was the first volume published in this series. Another new publishing avenue was opened with cooperative publication with various branches of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; Beauplan’s A Description of Ukraine (in facsimile, and English- and Ukrainian- language translations) was an example of such collaboration. At Harvard, HSUS collaborated with the Center for Jewish Studies to produce M. J. Rosman’s The Lord’s Jews (1990) and Henry Abramson’s A Prayer for the Government (1999). Furthermore, HSUS facilitated the publication of the series Studies in Ottoman Documents Pertaining to Ukraine and the Black Sea Countries, initially with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, subsequently with the Institute of Oriental Studies in Kyiv. In the late 1990s, the board of HSUS made plans to publish a new subseries of pedagogical materials for the teaching of Ukrainian language and culture. They also planned a new subseries for scholarship outside the traditional profile of the main series—for example, reprints, shorter single works, more experimental scholarship, and memoirs of specific scholarly importance.
HSUS traditionally has included eminent scholars on its editorial board, supported by members of the executive committee, including Stanislaw Baranczak, Joseph Fletcher, Oleg Grabar, Charles Maier, Richard E. Pipes, and Adam Ulam. Past and current members of the editorial board include Omeljan Pritsak, Ihor Ševčenko, Serhii Plokhy, Edward L. Keenan, Horace G. Lunt, George G. Grabowicz, Michael S. Flier, Lubomyr Hajda, Roman Szporluk, Frank Sysyn, and Wiktor Weintraub. Consulting editors included Olexa Horbatsch, Ryszard Łużny, Riccardo Picchio, Hans Rothe, George Y. Shevelov, William R. Veder, Jaroslav Isajevych, and Oleksa Mišanič.
The publication staff of HSUS consists of the manager of publications of HSUS (also a member of the editorial board) and an assistant editor. The managers of publications (originally called the director of publications or managing editor, until reorganization under Pat Wright) have included Marika Whaley, Pat Wright, Robert De Lossa, Paul Robert Magocsi, Donald Ostrowski, Maxim Tarnawsky, George Mihaychuk, Paul Hollingsworth, Roman Koropeckyj, and Kathryn Dodgson Taylor. Frank E. Sysyn and Lubomyr Hajda have been associate editors. Oleh Kotsyuba has been the manager of publications since February 2018.
Over the years, HSUS has been generously supported by the Ukrainian Studies Fund, which has given the series numerous subventions to help establish and maintain the scholarly and technical excellence of its books, while giving HSUS the opportunity to price the books in a way that made them accessible to a wide readership. This has made them available to students and the general public as well as to libraries and specialists. Equally important are the funds that have been established to support Institute publications and its continued efforts in Ukrainian studies. They include the Jaroslaw M. and Olha Duzey Endowed Publication Fund in Ukrainian Studies, the Myroslav and Irene Koltuniuk Publication Fund, the Peter and Emily Kulyk Publication Fund in Ukrainian Studies, the Vladimir Jurkowsky Publication Fund in Ukrainian Studies, the Dr. Evhen Omelsky Publication Fund in Ukrainian Studies, the Dr. Omeljan and Iryna Wolynec Publication Fund, and the Paul Sawka Bequest. A full list of endowments for HUSI is attached in Appendix A.
All HURI book publications are distributed primarily through Harvard University Press, which lists Institute publications in its catalogue. The Institute also keeps its own publications catalogue, which lists all its publications, with a full description of each. This arrangement has given Ukrainian Research Institute publications the widest possible distribution, with orders arriving from all parts of the world.
The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature
Among the initiatives of the Ukrainian Research Institute's Millennium Project, undertaken to commemorate Ukraine's thousand-year-old Christian heritage, was the publication of a series entitled The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature (HLEUL). The Harvard Library was to consist of facsimile editions of virtually unavailable texts, and their English and Ukrainian translations. To finance these initiatives, the Ukrainian Studies Fund undertook an effective campaign and received many generous donations from members of the Ukrainian diaspora.
Literature plays an essential role in defining the center of a culture and in providing it with a shared sense of continuity, especially for nations that existed without their own states. Literature, therefore, takes on special importance for Ukraine, whose very identity was long subjected to suppression and whose diaspora inhabits every region of the world. The HLEUL series was established to provide a clear exposition of the continuities between the medieval and early modern periods of Ukrainian literature. The works published in the Series reflect and articulate the most important historical, religious, sociopolitical and literary trends in Ukrainian culture in the period in which they were written.
The texts series of facsimiles included in the HLEUL project published ten volumes, at a cost covered solely by donations. Presently, print publication of texts has been moved to partners in Ukraine. The need for well-edited texts remains, but will proceed in digital rather than print publishing.
To date HLEUL has published seven volumes of English translations, all of which have received the critical acclaim of scholars beyond the field of Ukrainian studies, and indeed, of Slavic studies in general. Horace Lunt’s translation of the Rus´ Primary Chronicle is in the final stages of preparation for publication, and three more volumes are being completed. These translations were funded by donations from the Ukrainian diaspora community and grants of matching funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.