Ivan KURAS,
academician

A.YU.KRYMSKYI–PROMINENT UKRAINIAN
AND HUMANIST

A.Yu.Krymskyi’s life is the life of labor and achievements, and it is worthy of wonder and deepest respect. His achievements are best measured not by the number of books, studies, publications, pioneering scholarly research, literary works, textbooks, reference books, and dictionaries that can comprise a multipurpose library. In history of the Ukrainian culture, the legacy of Krymskyi is second only to the legacy of Ivan Franko who once wrote: “Only in work it is worth to live for work.” This motto was a daily standard of life and for Krymskyi. In his biographies he always talks about education and science, about what was realized and what is planned.

In one of the biographies he wrote: “I was born on January 3, 1871. My parents soon moved to Kyiv region, and later I again lived for 3 years in Volhynia, already being a big boy. This way I became equally closely linked both with the language of Kyiv and the language of Volhynia. By origin, I am not at all Ukrainian. My father was a Byelorussian by origin, and Russian by education; my mother was Polish. I studied in Russian schools, because here there are no other schools”.

Agatangel Yukhymovych Krymskyi is of Tatar origin, his ancestors left Bakhchisaray, the capital of Crimea, at the end of the XVII century due to local unrest. His ancestors settled in present-day Belarus (Mstislav), which was then in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Links between Lithuania and Crimea by way of emigration date back to the reign of Lithuanian Grand Duke Vitovta (1392-1430), who readily employed Tatar soldiers.

…Agatangel Krymskyi learned to read when he was three, and two years latter his father sent him to Zvenyhorodskyi School where he studied for five years (1876-1881). Already in that period, his father’s library became a moral roadmap for Agatangel: he developed a strong passion for reading that remained with him for the rest of his life. His thirst for reading was so strong that it resulted in damaged vision. His father, who was a history teacher in a gymnasium, had to wage a constant “war” against the boy, taking away and hiding books from him.

…After education in Ostrozi (1881-1884) and the Second Kyiv Gymnasium (1884-1885), Krymskyi successfully competed for admission to the College of Pavlo Galagan which was famous all over Ukraine. He studied there from 1885 to 1889. Krymskyi, who had a gift for languages, learned English and German, in addition to Polish and French, the “salon languages” of that period, already before attending gymnasium. During his time in the Galagan College, Krymskyi added Greek, Italian and Turkish to the list of languages he mastered. Earlier he had also mastered school-level Latin.

…At the same time, Mr. Krymskyi had never avoided Crimea, the Motherland of his ancestors. He worked together with Ismail Gasprinskyi – the patriarch of the renaissance of the Crimean Tatar written language. Krymskyi has often visited Crimea, had Crimean students, and maintained close contacts with new Crimean Tatar writers. However, nationally he felt no division. Recalling Gasprinskyi who once said: “I am Russian, at the same time being Moslem and Tatar,” Krymskyi added: “In conversations with me, a conscious Ukrainian, Gasprinskyi never called himself “Russian”.”

After graduating from Galagan College, his affection to the Orient led Krymskyi to the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow. Almost thirty years of Krymskyi’s active scholarly and teaching career (1889-1918) are connected with this institute. There Mr. Krymskyi obtained a solid background in orientalism, and latter became a professor. His main subjects became Arabic philology, Islam, and Arabic literature. He also learned Persian language and literature, as well as Turkish language and literature (1889-1892). After finishing his studies in Lazarevskyi Institute, Agatangel Krymskyi doesn’t relinquish his interests in Ukraine and completed full course of Slavic studies at the Department of History and Philology of Moscow University (1892-1896). There he listened to lectures on world history by professor Volodymyr Gerie.

After graduating from the University, Krymskyi received a biennial grant from the Lazarevskii Institute which he used to travel to Lebanon (1896-1898). This gave him an opportunity to familiarize himself directly with oriental life and culture.

…While in Moscow, Krymskyi remained closely connected with Ukrainian cultural and literary figures. He wrote fiction and translations into Ukrainian. The formation of his world view, scientific principles, and literary creativity was inseparable from a favorable influence of prominent literary figures such as Ivan Franco and Lesia Ukrainka. It also cannot be understood without regard for intellectual environment of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the late 19^th century and the pre-revolutionary years of the 20^th century.

In Moscow, Krymskyi became the most prominent representative of the new school of Russian orientalism at the turn of the two centuries. In 1892, he completed with highest honors a course of special classes at the Lazarevskyi Institute on Oriental Languages, obtaining the X category rank. Such a diploma was awarded only to those students who completed the whole course with highest grades, and whose thesis on one of the oriental languages were approved by the Scientist Council of the Institute. Krymskyi’s thesis was titled “Translation and Interpretation of Al-Farabi’s Philosophical Essay: Main Philosophical Questions.” In 1896 Krymskyi also graduated from the Department of History and Philology of Moscow University. Krymskyi therefore received a broad training in history and philology, as well as specialty training in Oriental studies, and was noted for his immense scholarly erudition and excellent knowledge of Oriental and European languages. Naturally, it was he who received a grant to from Lazarevskyi Institute to study and travel in the Orient.

…The archival documents and epistolary legacy of Mr. Krymskyi show that during the years he spend abroad he was intensively learning the specifics of literary Arabic and Turkish languages, popular dialects, conversational language, and was collecting field materials. Krymskyi thus received not only an outstanding theoretical background, but also a solid practical training.

…In pre-revolutionary years A.Krymskyi was the most prominent orientalist of the Moscow school. It was he who defined scholarly and pedagogical emphasis of special classes at the Lazarevskyi Institute. His works from that period are exceptional not only in the Russian, but also in the world school of Orientalism. There is no other scholar who wrote so many textbooks, who prepared courses on the history of Oriental countries, on the history of Islam, on the literary history of the entire region – the Middle East and the Near East. In this regard, scholarly and pedagogical legacy of Krymskyi in the orientalism is a truly unique phenomenon.

Pre-revolutionary literature presented Krymskyi as scholar-anchoret, a cabinet scholar, but this is completely wrong. O. Babishkin who studied the scholarly legacy of Krymskyi was right when he wrote that “to talk about Agatangel Krymskyi as a cabinet scientist is to say nothing.” Moreover, it mutilates the image of a prominent scholar, brilliant popularizer of science, a great organizer and educator, a master of the written and spoken word who educated a whole class of first-rate orientalists.

When hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi established Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Krymskyi was invited to become its permanent secretary. He moved to Kyiv, where he laid the foundations of scholarly orientalism, at the same time being in charge of Ukrainian studies. At that time Krymskyi’s history of Persia and history of Turkey were published in Ukrainian. Unfortunately, he could head the Academy and fruitfully work as a scholar only during 1918-1928. From 1929 the persecution of him begun, ending with his arrest and death.

Krymskyi’s first years in Kyiv were especially difficult. The authority was changing every month, frequently it was hostile to the very conception of Ukrainian high science, so that the mere physical existence of the Academy, which was in a terrible state economically, had to be protected. Professor Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko recalled that the building was not heated, ink froze in the jars and had to be warmed up by breathing on it. “However, hungry enthusiasts of the Ukrainian science gathered in winter rooms, wearing old trench coats, with frozen chapped hands. Love to Ukraine kept them warm, and they were making plans for rebuilding Ukrainian science…”

…Not everybody bore famine and cold of Kyiv. President V. Vernadksyi first moved to the Tavriyskyi University in Simferopol (1920-1921), and in 1922 he moved to Petrograd for permanent residence. His successor, botanist Volodymyr Lypskyi (1863-1937; president during 1922-1928), did not have, in the words of the contemporaries, “neither ability nor desire to lead the Academy” [Polonska-Vasilenko 1949, 122]. During that period (up to 1928) the burden was fully carried by Krymskyi, and this is why in Kyiv the Academy of Science was jokingly called not the Ukrainian Academy, but the “Crimean” Academy.

It is only natural that in such a “Crimean” Academy the Orient had to be adequately presented. In this connection, in his “Comments on Department of Oriental History and Philology” Agatangel Yukhymovych presented his view of the tasks for the future Ukrainian orientalism that hasn’t lost its topicality today.

…One should not forget literary works of Agatangel Krymskyi connected with the Orient. A.Krymskyi, who was one of the active and inspired classics of Ukrainian literary art, during the height of his scholarly career at the turn of XIX-XX centuries was also an all-around expert of classic Arabic and Persian – not only literature, but culture as a whole. This rare ability gave Krymskyi an opportunity to experience and to create simultaneously and harmoniously in both areas of poetical pursuits. “Palm branches” of Krymskyi-poet is a particular genre. His occasional poems are not only artistic translations. They are “Orientally” inspired, and are also structurally “oriental” examples of the Ukrainian lyrical genius. “Palm branches” is also a particular genre of world literature. Chicago University Professor Yaroslav Stetkevych, a sophisticated expert of Arabic poetry, reached a conclusion that only “Western-Eastern Divan” of Goethe can compete with this lyric masterpiece of Krymskyi.

At the same time, to carry the organizational burden in the Academy of Sciences, Krymskyi worked 18 hours a day. It was a difficult task to create fundamental science during and after the Civil War. Krymskyi nevertheless tried to overcome all difficulties, and was frequently successful.

Krymskyi was first of all a philologist of Arabic and an expert on Islam, deeply familiar with Arabic religious and social literature, including works of Arabic historians of the Middle Ages. In addition, medieval Persian literature and historiography were among his favorite subjects. None of the new historians of the Ottoman Empire was as knowledgeable as Krymskyi.

The defining feature of his scholarly works (which is evident, for example, in his work “The History of Turkey” recently re-published by the Institute on Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) is great attention to sources – Oriental, Slavic, as well as Western. Krymskyi always quotes either primary sources from the XVI century, or editions of a particular source; he gives the date of publication, as well as frequently a short, but accurate description of a source.

…Tragic years were coming, however – 1928, 1929, followed by even more terrible 1930s. The targeted liquidation of the fundamental Ukrainian science had begun. Krymskyi met bitter fate as well: he was prevented from doing the work that was his calling. Despite the fact that on May 3, 1928, members of the Academy unanimously re-elected Krymskyi as the Academy’s Permanent Secretary, the government didn’t approve this decision. By the fall of next year (1929) Krymskyi had to also leave his post as the Head of the Department of History and Philology of the Academy. At the same time secretary of department, academician Serhiy Yefremov, was arrested on fabricated charges as the head of non-existing and so-called nationalistic organization “The Unions for Liberation of Ukraine” (SVU). Shortly thereafter Krymskyi witnesses how institutions of Oriental studies that he created with much work and affection are being liquidated one after the other, including finally his main pride and joy – the Academy’s Department of History and Philology. His last scholarly work was published in 1930, and he was prohibited from supervising graduate students. At the same time the process of physical elimination of Crimean literary and scientific figures was unfolding.

Agatangel Krymskyi was deeply distressed by the liquidation of the results of his life-long work and by his status as a “disgraced” academic. He, who by the decade of his work raised his favorite “baby,” our Academy of Science, where he knew everybody and everybody knew and respected him, became an untouchable pariah, ignored by those who until recently were his colleagues. The scholar was badly hit by this situation not only morally, but also materially. “His shabby clothes attracted attention even in Kyiv, where the majority of intelligentsia had beggars’ clothing” [Polonska-Vasilenko 1949, 2, 126-127].

Finally, the Institute of Linguistics recalled about Krymskyi’s existence in 1936-1937. He was not allowed to teach, but was allowed to have graduate students. In 1939-1941s, when Lviv and western Ukraine were joined to Ukraine, Krymskyi became necessary for missions to liberated lands as an patriarch of the Soviet Ukrainian science and a living proof of its existence.

Indeed, each of his trips to Lviv was perceived there as a great event, and Agatangel Krymskyi – as a victor. It was in Lviv were Krymskyi met Omelian Prytsak, his last graduate student who later himself became an orientalist of international level and dignified successor of Krymskyi’s work. Currently, by virtue of the efforts of this talent scholar, the Institute on Orientalism was restored in the system of the National Academy of Sciences and was named after Agatangel Krymskyi.

However, the repressive organs of totalitarian power didn’t forget a about embattled academic. In July 1941, half a year after the nationwide celebration of his 70^th birthday when Krymskyi was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (15 January 1941), the scholar was arrested on fabricated charges (case #148001) of participating in the non-existing SVU organization [article by M. Ilyenko “Khvatalna evakuatsia.” – Literaturna Ukraina, 25 October 1990].

Krymskyi’s life ended on January 25, 1942 in a prison hospital in Kustanay, in a far away Kazakhstan. Krymsky was as dignified in his death as in his life. One can only repeat the words of Ivan Ilyenko: “One should render homage to A. Krymskyi, who, in spite of old age and ill health, found inner strength and used is to the end but didn’t surrender, did not calumniate neither himself nor his friends, and who dutifully bore his cross to the Golgotha of national punishment” [Ilyenko, newspaper “Literaturna Ukraina,” 25 October 1990).

The genius is not dependent on time. The work of A.Krymskyi didn’t perish. It lives on and is fruitfully developed in the devoted work of his successors. His name was eternalized in name of Institute on Orientalism of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and its branch office in Simferopol, in the annual international scientific readings named after Krymskyi, and in the Award of the Academy named after him which is awarded to scholars of oriental studies – the followers of their great Teacher.