The Harvard Project Commemorating the Millennium of Christianity in Rus-Ukraine

As an historically significant event, the Baptism of Kyivan Rus led to socio-political and religious changes in Eastern Europe which greatly impacted the region’s further historical development. The commemoration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus-Ukraine outlined the essence of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute’s (HURI) academic endeavor, known as the “Harvard Project of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus-Ukraine”. Prof. Omeljan Pritsak, who served as HURI’s director at that time, was the key initiator of the Harvard Millennium Project. As a scholar, Prof. Pritsak envisioned this historical commemoration as a unique opportunity for Ukrainian intellectuals to contribute to the preservation of the centuries-old spiritual and material heritage of the Ukrainian people. The eminent historian noted: “Works of culture belong to those who know how to appreciate them, who study these works, who publish them and thus make these works a viable element of one’s own structure of thinking. Only in such a way is it possible for the cultural duration and unity of people of different eras to materialize.”
In 1983, an academic advisory committee was created to organize the commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity. The committee consisted of HURI employees, representatives of Ukrainian churches, Ukrainian scholars and community activists. The key components of the Harvard Millennium Project comprised a multi-volume publication of the corpus of Ukrainian pre-secular literature of the XI-XVIII centuries in the original language and in English translation. In addition, the project envisioned the organizing of an international academic conference and the subsequent publication of the conference’s proceedings.
Thanks to the generous donations of the Ukrainian diaspora, the Ukrainian Studies Fund financed the publication of the series titled “Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature” (HLEUL). This series was created in order to highlight the continuity between the medieval and early modern periods of Ukrainian literature. The published works reflect the most important historical, religious, socio-political and literary trends in Ukrainian culture during the period of their writing.
Within the framework of the HLEUL publishing project, three sub-series were produced: a corpus of facsimile texts written in different languages, a corpus of English translations and translations into modern Ukrainian. The series of facsimile texts was published in ten volumes. To date, seven volumes of English translations have been published. The remaining volumes are in their final stages of preparation for print.

List of printed facsimiles:

Volume 1. (1989) Collected Works of Meletius Smotrytsky
Volume 2. (1987) The Jevanhelije Ucytelnoje of Meletius Smotrytsky
Volume 3. (1995) Lev Krevza’s A Defense of Church Unity ; and Zaxarija Kopystens’kyj’s Palinodia., Parts 1 and

Volume 4. (1988) Seventeenth-Century Writings on the Kyivan Caves Monastery
Volume 5. (1989) The Diariusz Podrozny of Pylyp Orlyk: 1720–1726
Volume 6. (1988) The Diariusz Ppodrozny of Pylyp Orlyk: 1727–1731
Volume 8. (1990) The Old Rus’ Kyivan and Galician-Volhynian Chronicles: The Ostroz’kyj (Xlebnikov) and Cetvertyns’kyj (Pogodin) Codices
Volume 9. (1991) Hryhorij Hrabjanka’s The Great War of Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyi
Volume 10. (2004) The Pověst’ Vremennykh lět: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis parts 1, 2, 3

List of printed translations into English:

Volume 1. (1989) The Paterik of the Kyivan Caves Monastery
Volume 2. (1992) The Hagiography of Kyivan Rus
Volume 3. (1995) Lev Krevza’s A Defense of Church Unity ; and Zaxarija Kopystens’kyj’s Palinodia., Parts 1 and
Volume 4. (1990) The Life of Paisij Velyckovs’kyj
Volume 5. (1991) Sermons and Rhetoric of Kyivan Rus’
Volume 6. (1994) The Edificatory Prose of Kyivan Rusʹ
Volume 7. (2005) Rus’ Restored: Selected Writings of Meletij Smotryc’kyj

Regarding the translations of works into modern Ukrainian, after Dr. Oleksa Myshanych of Kyiv and Prof. Yaroslav Isayevich of Lviv were invited to join the HLEUL’s editorial board, the possibility came about to prepare for print a two-volume edition of Hryhoriy Skovoroda’s texts. As a result, the modern Ukrainian language edition of the HLEUL series was published in 1994 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the philosopher-poet’s death.

The next milestone of the Harvard Millennium Project took the form of an international academic congress dedicated to the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus-Ukraine, which took place in Ravenna, Italy with the active participation of, among others, the world’s oldest institution of higher learning, namely the University of Bologna, the Department of Culture of the city of Ravenna and the Association of Italian Slavists. The academic congress convened from April 18 to April 24, 1988 and was attended by more than 150 participants from all over the world, including scholars from Ukraine, the USA, Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Norway and Czechoslovakia. The academic presentations of the congress were delivered in Ukrainian, Italian, English, French and German. Subsequently, the proceedings of the congress were compiled and published in HURI’s journal “Harvard Ukrainian Studies” (HUS) as a special two-volume single edition in 1990.