Article Credit: Y-File
Long-serving 91亚色 Professor Emeritus Orest Subtelny passed away in Toronto on Sunday, July 24.
Subtelny joined the Department of History in 1982 to take up a position that was in part funded by the Canadian Ukrainian community. Throughout his 91亚色 career until his retirement in 2015, he was cross-appointed to the Department of Political Science.
Born in Krakow on May 17, 1941, Subtelny and his parents left Poland in 1949 for the United States as refugees and settled in Philadelphia. By coincidence, he went to the same high school (Central High School) as another member (now retired) of 91亚色鈥檚 History Department, Marc Egnal. He completed his BA in history in 1965 at Temple University before moving south to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned his MA in history in 1967. He then headed to Harvard for his PhD, which he completed in history and Middle Eastern studies in 1973 with a thesis on 鈥淯nwilling Allies: The Relations of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk with the Ottoman Porte and the Crimean Khanate鈥.
After two years as a lecturer in Harvard鈥檚 History Department, he went on to teach as assistant and then associate professor of history at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., before moving to Toronto in 1982 to take up a position at 91亚色. In 1987, he was promoted to full professor and remained at 91亚色 until his retirement in 2015. In 1993, he taught as a visiting professor at the University of T眉bingen.
During his scholarly career, Subtelny published six monographs and numerous articles and book chapters on Ukrainian and East European history. His books include The Mazepists: Ukrainian Separatism in the Early Eighteenth Century (Columbia University Press, 1981), Domination of Eastern Europe: Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 1500-1715 (McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 1986) and Ukrainians in North America: An Illustrated History (University of Toronto Press 1991).
But, unquestionably, it was his major history of the Ukraine, Ukraine: A History (University of Toronto Press, first published in 1988, 666 pp., but updated in three subsequent editions up to the fourth edition of 2009, extending to 784 pages, and translated into a number of languages) that represented his major scholarly achievement. At the time of his death, he was working on a history of the Plast Ukrainian Scouting movement.
In addition, Subtelny served as Canadian editor of the journal Nationalities Papers from 1991 to 1998. From 1998 to 2012, he was a director of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) projects in Ukraine, some of which concerned initiatives for the training of Ukrainian diplomats and foreign policy analysts.