George Shevelov facts for kids

George Shevelov (born Yuri Schneider , 17 December 1908 – 12 April 2002) was an important Ukrainian-American professor and expert on languages. He was a linguist, a philologist (someone who studies language in historical texts), and a historian of literature. For many years, he taught about Slavic languages at Columbia University.

Shevelov had a new idea about the history of the East Slavic language. Most people thought that Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian all came from one single old language. But Shevelov believed these languages grew separately from each other.

Early Life and Family History

Yuri Schneider was born in Kharkiv, which was then part of the Russian Empire (and is now in Ukraine), in 1908. Some records say he was born in Łomża, Poland. However, Shevelov said his mother changed the records to protect him from danger.

His father, Vladimir Karlovich Schneider, was a high-ranking officer in the Russian Imperial Army. Both his parents, Vladimir and Varvara Meder, were of German heritage. In 1914, when Russia went to war with Germany, his father, who was very loyal to Russia, decided to change the family name to a Russian one. He chose "Shevelov" and also changed his middle name. The Tsar, Nikolai II, personally approved these changes in 1916.

During World War I, Shevelov and his mother moved to Kharkiv. In 1918, his father went missing in action and was believed to have died. In Kharkiv, Shevelov attended several schools, including a private school, a gymnasium, and a technical school.

Education and Early Career

In 1925, Shevelov finished school at the First Kharkiv Trade and Industry Union School. For two years, he worked as a statistician and helped manage old documents. From 1927 to 1931, he studied literature and language at the Kharkiv People's Education Institute.

After his studies, he became a Ukrainian language teacher in 1931. He taught at the Ukrainian Communist Newspaper Technical School from 1932 to 1938. He also taught at the Ukrainian Communist Institute for Journalism from 1933 to 1939. In 1936, he began postgraduate studies with Leonid Bulakhovsky as his guide.

By 1939, he was teaching the history of Ukrainian language and literature. He became an assistant professor at the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute. In 1941, he joined the Linguistic Institute of the Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR as a researcher. During this time, he faced pressure from the government. In 1934, Shevelov helped write a two-volume grammar book for the Ukrainian language, which was reprinted several times.

Life During World War II

Shevelov stayed in Kharkiv when Wehrmacht troops entered the city in October 1941. He worked for "New Ukraine," a Ukrainian language newspaper. He also worked for another newspaper called "Ukrainian Sowing." From April 1942, he worked for the city government and an educational group called Prosvita.

One of his former students, Oles Honchar, later claimed that Shevelov refused to help him when Honchar was a prisoner of war in a Nazi camp in Kharkiv. Shevelov said he never received any letter asking for help. Honchar survived and became a famous Ukrainian writer. Shevelov later criticized some of Honchar's books.

In February 1943, Shevelov and his mother left Kharkiv as the Red Army advanced. They lived briefly in Lviv, where he continued to study Ukrainian and work on a new Ukrainian grammar. As the Soviets moved further west in 1944, Shevelov moved through Poland, Slovakia, Austria, and finally to Saxony, Germany.

Life in Europe and the United States

After World War II ended, Shevelov worked for a Ukrainian newspaper called "Chas" ("Time"). In 1946, he enrolled at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Germany. He earned his doctorate degree in philology in 1947. He also served as vice-president of a Ukrainian literary group called MUR from 1945 to 1949.

To avoid being sent back to the Soviet Union from Germany, he moved to neutral Sweden. From 1950 to 1952, he taught Russian language at Lund University. In 1952, he and his mother moved to the United States. He taught Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University from 1952 to 1954. Then, he became a professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University, where he taught from 1958 to 1977.

He helped start and was president of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, a group for Ukrainian scholars living outside Ukraine. He also received honorary doctorates from the University of Alberta in 1983 and Lund University in 1984. Shevelov was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile and published many articles in Ukrainian magazines abroad.

Return to Ukraine and Later Life

After 1943, Shevelov was mostly unknown in academic circles in Ukraine. But in 1990, he visited Ukraine and was elected an international member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 1999, he received honorary doctorates from Kharkiv University and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

In 2001, he published two volumes of his memoirs, which are like his life story. George Shevelov passed away in New York in 2002.

Awards and Contributions

• Antonovych prize (1988)

Shevelov wrote and published over 600 scholarly works about Ukrainian and other Slavic languages. From 1943, he developed his idea that the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed separately. He disagreed with the common belief that Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian languages all came from one single East Slavic language.

Instead, Shevelov suggested that there were several different groups of dialects from the very beginning. These dialect groups later grew into the separate Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian languages we know today. According to Shevelov, the first signs of a distinct Ukrainian language appeared around the 7th century, and the language fully formed around the 16th century.

Legacy and Recognition

On September 4, 2013, a special plaque honoring Shevelov was put up in his hometown of Kharkiv. However, on September 25, 2013, the Kharkiv city council voted to remove the plaque. They claimed it was put up illegally and that Shevelov was a "Nazi henchman." The governor of Kharkiv Oblast even suggested Shevelov took an apartment from a Jewish family during the war.

Scientists from many universities, including University of Cambridge, Columbia University, and University of Kansas, wrote an open letter. They stated that US government agencies and Columbia University had investigated these claims that Shevelov was a Nazi collaborator and found them to be completely false. Half an hour after the city council's vote, the memorial plaque was destroyed.

However, on January 5, 2015, a court in Kharkiv reversed the city council's decision. In 2021, the memorial plaque was put back up after people raised money for it.