Aizenshtok, Yarema

Aizenshtok, Yarema [Айзеншток, Ярема; Ajzenštok, Jarema], b 4 March 1900 in Yelysavethrad, d 7 June 1980 in Leningrad. Literary scholar specializing in 19th-century Ukrainian literature. Aizenshtok graduated from Kharkiv University in 1921 and lectured in Kharkiv's institutions of higher learning. He devoted much time to the publication of Taras Shevchenko's works, especially his Shchodennyk (Diary, 1925). He also published Shevchenkoznavstvo – suchasna problema (Shevchenko Scholarship: A Contemporary Problem, 1922) and Iak pratsiuvav Shevchenko (How Shevchenko Worked, 1940). A series of works by Ivan Kotliarevsky, Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Yakiv Shchoholiv, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, and others was published under his editorship and with his commentaries. Aizenshtok's articles on 19th-century Ukrainian literature appeared in the journal Za sto lit: Materialy z hromads’koho i literaturnoho zhyttia Ukraïny XIX i pochatku XX stolittia (1927–30), a collection of essays published by the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and in Zapysky Istorychno-filolohichnoho viddilu VUAN (1919–31). When the persecution of individuals promoting Ukrainian culture began in Ukraine in the early 1930s, Aizenshtok moved to Leningrad, where, without abandoning his work in Ukrainian literature, he concentrated primarily on research in 19th-century Russian literature.

Ivan Koshelivets

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]