George Shevelov
| George Yurii Shevelov | |
|---|---|
A young George Shevelov.
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| Born |
17 December 1908 Kharkiv, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | 12 April 2002 (aged 93) New York City, United States |
| Influenced | Oksana Zabuzhko |
George Yurii Shevelov (Schneider) (Russian: Юрий Владимирович Шевелёв, Ukrainian: Юрій Володимирович Шевельов) (pseud: Yurii Sherekh, Hryhory Shevchuk, Šerech, Sherekh, Sher; Гр. Ш., Ю. Ш. and others) (December 17, 1908 – April 12, 2002) was a Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic. 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.
George Yurii Shevelov was born Yurii Shneider in Kharkiv, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire in 1908. Some sources however, indicate Kharkiv as his place of birth (his mother incorrectly stated his birthplace in order to escape persecution). His family moved to Kharkiv in 1910. 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 choose 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 (Ukrainian: 7-а трудовa школa).
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