Orest Subtelny

Orest Subtelny (Ukrainian: О́рест Субте́льний, 7 May 1941 – 24 July 2016) was a Canadian historian. Born in Kraków, Poland, he received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1973. Since 1982, he was a professor in the departments of history and political science at York University in Toronto.

In the words of Taras Kuzio, a senior research fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Subtelny “made a truly enormous contribution to Ukrainian nation-building. Prof. Subtelny was not an ivory-tower academic. He was an internationally acclaimed historian, civic and community activist whose roots in the Ukrainian community meant his focus was on Ukrainian national identity, the struggle for independence and achieving statehood.”

Orest Subtelny was born in Krakow, in Nazi-occupied Poland, on May 17, 1941. His father, Myroslav, was a lawyer who had lived in the city in the mid-1930s and returned with his wife, Ivanna, in late August, 1939, to take a government job. The following day, Germany invaded, forcing the family to return to Ukraine. His mother but Orest’s mother returned to Krakow to give birth to her son because the city had a hospital. The family spent World War II in western Ukraine, then fled the Soviet Red Army, and spent 1945 to 1949 in a displaced persons camp in Germany before arriving in Philadelphia as refugees.

Subtelny graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia in 1965. He also studied in universities of Vienna and Hamburg. Subtelny received his doctorate in 1973 after defending his dissertation "Reluctant allies: Pylyp Orlyk and his relations with Crimean Khanate and Ottoman Empire. 1708-1742." His primary adviser was Oleksander Ohloblyn.

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