Serhii Mykolayovych Plokhii (Ukr. Сергій Миколайович Плохій; Rus. Сергей Николаевич Плохий; born May 23, 1957, Gorky) is a Ukrainian and American historian, a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe and Ukraine. He is a professor in the Ukrainian history chair at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. He was born in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), although his childhood and entire scholarly career are tied to Ukraine and North America.[1]

Origins and Education

Serhii's father, Mykola Plokhii, was a metallurgical engineer and a graduate of the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Institute; he was assigned by the state to Gorky, where the future historian was born in 1957. His mother, Lidiya Plokhii, worked as a pediatrician. Soon after her son's birth, the family returned to Zaporizhzhia, where Serhii spent his childhood and youth.[1]

In 1980, Plokhii graduated from the Faculty of History at Dnipro (then Dnipropetrovsk) University. His academic mentors were Professor Yuriy Mytsyk and Mykola Kovalsky, the founder of the Dnipropetrovsk school of source studies. Plokhii defended his candidate's dissertation, "Latin-Language Works of the Mid-17th Century as a Source for the History of the Liberation War of the Ukrainian People, 1648–1654," ahead of schedule, on November 26, 1982, at the Faculty of History of Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow. In 1990, at Kyiv State University named after T. G. Shevchenko, he received the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences, defending the dissertation "The Policy of the Papacy in Ukraine in the Second Half of the 16th and Mid-17th Century."[1]

Career

From 1983 to 1992, Plokhii taught at Dnipro University, advancing from lecturer to professor, department head, and dean. In 1986–1987, he did research training at Columbia and Harvard Universities. At the same time, he served on a voluntary basis as director of the university museum and, together with colleagues, studied the history of German and Mennonite settlements in southern Ukraine.[1]

In August 1991, Plokhii moved to Canada and began teaching at the University of Alberta. At the same time, he headed a department, and later a section, at the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, initiating a publishing program on sources for Ukrainian church history. From 1996, he worked at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), where he founded the Program on the Study of Religion and Culture and for more than ten years served as associate director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research. During this period, he took part in editing the English translation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's "History of Ukraine-Rus'."[1]

In 2007, Plokhii won a competition for the position of professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. Since 2013, he has also been director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard and has led the MAPA project, a digital atlas of Ukraine.[3] He is a member of the academic council of the Ukrainian Historical Journal and a member of Ukrainian PEN.[1]

Books and Recognition

Plokhy is the author of more than a dozen books on the history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, published in many languages. Those available in Russian translation include "The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union," "The Gates of Europe," "Lost Kingdom," "Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front," and "The Man with the Poison Gun."[2] For "The Last Empire" he received the Pushkin House Book Prize in London and the Lionel Gelber Prize in 2015, and in 2016 the "Ambassador of New Europe" Award of the European Solidarity Centre.[2] In 2018 he was awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.[1]

Connection to Nizhny Novgorod

The only Nizhny Novgorod chapter in Plokhy's biography is his birth in Gorky on May 23, 1957: his father had been sent there on assignment after graduating from university. The family soon moved to Zaporizhzhia, and the historian's later life has no connection to the city.[1]

Links

  • Wikidata (Q1257297 — entry in the free knowledge base)
  • Scopus (6505588715 — author profile on Scopus)
  • VIAF (12522767 — Virtual International Authority File)
  • ISNI (0000000108710566)
  • GND (12483017X — German National Library catalog)

Sources

  1. koob.ru — Plokhy S.M. Books online
  2. ast.ru — Plokhy Sergey Nikolaevich — author biography, list of books — AST Publishing House
  3. rest.kyiv.ua — 【Plokhy Sergey Nikolaevich】 brief biography of Sergey Plokhy for children