Prof. Valentina Izmirlieva, director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute publishes the Inaugural George Shevelov Memorial Lecture “The Cult of St. Volodymyr and the Theft of History”

Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and before the appearance of Putin’s so-called theses about the “unity of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples”, the director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Prof. Valentina Izmirlieva, delivered a lecture on April 27, 2018, about the Russians’ new attempts to expropriate Ukrainian religious traditions. Honoring the memory of Columbia University’s outstanding Ukrainian scholar, Professor Yuri Shevelov, the speaker focused her presentation on the construction of a strange statue in Moscow honoring Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv ̶  a grandiose and tasteless monument consecrated on November 4, 2016, on the Day of Russia’s National Unity. The lecture underscored the contemporary cultural appropriation and looting by Russia, which consists of the militarization of the cult of Volodymyr and the reorientation of this cult to a perverted ritual. It is worth noting that the lecture was prophetic in exposing the aggressive nature of the Putin regime and its fundamental goal of stealing Ukrainian history and destroying Ukraine. The Ukrainian Studies Fund has since published this important lecture and is proud that the legacy of Professor Shevelov lives on and continues to evolve at Columbia University in such an appropriate way.

The electronic version of the publication is available through the following link: 

https://harriman.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Theft-of-History_web.pdf