The Encyclopedia of Ukraine Project: A Personal Memoir (1976-1986) *

ABSTRACT/RESUME This paper summarizes the author's involvement, as director of the Institute of Ukrainian (CIUS) at the of Alberta, in the preparation of the first two volumes of the five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine, published between 1984 and 1993 by the of on behalf of the institute, the Foundation for Ukrainian and the Scientific Society (NTSh), based in Sarcelles, France. The account describes the motivation behind the project, its main personnel, financial cost, and the numerous difficulties in working with scholars on two continents (North America and Europe) with differing conceptions of the project's nature and editorial control, rooted partly in differences of age but mainly in differing conceptions of new-world and old-world competencies. The resulting power struggle is a central feature of the paper. L'auteur de cet article donne un compte rendu de son engagement comme directeur du Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies a l'Universite de l'Alberta dans la preparation des deux premiers volumes d'une serie de cinq volumes Encyclopedia of Ukraine, publiee entre les annees 1984 et 1993 par l' University of Press pour l'institut, le Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, et le Shevchenko Scientific Society, base a Sarcelles en France. Cet article racontent l'engouement cree par le sujet, le caractere de la recherche, le cout financier, et les nombreuses difficultes survenues en travaillant avec des ecoliers sur deux continents (Amerique du Nord et l'Europe). Les partis avaient une vue differente de la nature du projet et son edition. La difference d'age des ecoliers et aussi la differente conception du nouveau-monde versus la competence de l'ancien monde. La lutte pour le pouvoir entre ces deux competences est l'attrait principal de cet article. 1. THE PROJECT UNDER GEORGE LUCKYJ'S SUPERVISION The five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine, a project I directed from 1976 to 1986 that was published by the of between 1984 and 1993, was the most important project undertaken by the of Alberta's Institute of Ukrainian (CIUS). The goal was an academic work by a team of international scholars coordinated by George Luckyj, a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the of (also the institute's associate director in charge of its Toronto office), and Volodymyr Kubijovyc, the president of the Scientific Society (NTSh) in Sarcelles, France, some twenty kilometres north of Paris. Publication costs were to be borne by the Foundation for Ukrainian founded, like the institute, by the Ukrainian Professional and Business Federation when I was its president (1973-75). The encyclopedia was thus a joint project of Canadians of Ukrainian background and a European-based, emigre-led NTSh. Without the institutional means of an independent nation-state (Ukraine), the project was a very ambitious undertaking for an ethnic group that relied primarily on financial resources. It is not easy to arrive at the true cost of producing the encyclopedia. In a table in the spring of 1983, I indicated that the sums between 1978 and 1983 were approximately $450,000 (an annual average of $75,000). That average subsequently doubled in the rush to bring out the first and second volumes. The amounts did not include the $105,400 contributed by the foundation by the spring of 1983 or the almost $300,000 it paid to publish the first volume. A reasonable estimate of the cost of publishing the first volume in October of 1984 would be around one million dollars. I first met Volodymyr Mikhailovych Kubijovyc (and Athanas Figol, his business manager from Munich) on 25 March 1974 at a luncheon arranged by longtime Ukrainian-Canadian community activist Peter Savaryn, an emigre close to the work at Sarcelles. …

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