George Yurii Shevelov (name at birth , ) also known by his numerous literary pseudonyms Yurii Sherekh, Hryhory Shevchuk, Šerech, Sherekh, Sher; , , etc. (December 17, 1908 – April 12, 2002) was a Ukrainian-American professor, linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic of German heritage. A longtime professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University, he challenged the prevailing notion of a unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian later developed, instead proposing that these languages emerged independently from one another.
Early life
George Yurii Shevelov was born in Kharkiv, then part of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1908. Some sources state his place of birth as Łomża, Łomża Governorate (then part of the Russian Empire, now Poland), although according to Shevelov, this is because his mother falsified records fearing persecution. His father, Vladimir Karlovich Shnaider (Schneider) was a high ranking Russian Imperial Army officer who held the rank of major-general. His father and mother (Varvara Meder, who originally was of noble birth from an established Moscow family) were both ethnic Germans. When Russia declared war on the German Empire in 1914, his father – a fervent Russian monarchist – decided to russify the family name. Shnaider chose the Russian equivalent of his surname = Shevelov, and also changed the patronymic “Karlovich” to “Yuryevich”. Such changes required a personal petition to the Tsar, and in his case it was personally granted by Nikolai II in 1916. During the World War I, Yurii and his mother moved to Kharkiv. At the beginning of 1918, Shevelov's father was missing in action and was presumed killed.
In Kharkiv, Yurii initially attended the E. Druzhkova Private School, then at 3rd State Boy's Gymnasium, and then continued his education at the Technical School #7 ().
In Soviet Ukraine
In 1925 Shevelov graduated from the First Kharkiv Trade and Industry Union school (). From 1925 till 1927 he worked as a statistician and archive keeper for South Chemical Trust. In 1927–1931 he attended classes at the literary-linguistic branch of the Kharkiv People's Education Institute. From August 1931 he was employed as a Ukrainian language school teacher. From 1932 till 1938 he was employed as a Ukrainian language teacher at the Ukrainian Communist Newspaper Technical School (). From 1933 till 1939 he also taught Ukrainian language at the Ukrainian Communist Institute for Journalism. From September 1936 he was a postgraduate student under the guidance of Leonid Bulakhovsky. In 1939, he taught the history of the Ukrainian language and literature. From November 1939 he became the assistant professor and deputy chair of the philology department of the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute. In 1941 he became a research fellow at the Linguistic Institute of the Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. In that same year he was pressured to become an NKVD informer.
In 1934, Shevelov was the co-author of a Grammar of the Ukrainian language in two volumes. This text was reprinted in 1935 and 1936.
During WWII
Shevelov was able to avoid induction into the Red Army and remained in Kharkiv following the Soviet evacuation and during the entry of Wehrmacht troops into Kharkiv on 25 October 1941. Within Reichskommissariat Ukraine, he joined the “New Ukraine” in December 1941, a Ukrainian language newspaper partially controlled by OUN. Later Shevelov also worked at the “Ukrainian Sowing” newspaper (}. From April 1942 Shevelov worked for the city administration and collaborated with the educational organization Prosvita. In his memoirs, one of his former students Oles Honchar claimed that when as a Soviet POW he was detained in a Nazi Camp in Kharkiv, Shevelov refused his pleas for assistance . Shevelov answered the allegation in an interview stating that he never received the letter "...А потім у нас відбулася ще одна зустріч віч-на-віч. Гончар почав на мене нападати – ідеологічно, згадувати якісь факти, про які я нічого не знаю. Ніби-то коли в роки війни він потрапив до харківської в'язниці, то передав мені лист, в якому просив посприяти його визволенню, а я міг, та не захотів. Можливо, такий лист і справді був, але до мене він ніколи не потрапляв.". Honchar escaped death to become a renowned and influential Ukrainian writer. Shevelov has been critical of Soviet novels including Honchar's major work.