Zhukovsky, Arkadii [Жуковський, Аркадій; Žukovs’kyj, Arkadij] (Joukovsky), b 12 January 1922 in Chernivtsi, Bukovyna, d 2 October 2014 in Paris. Historian; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) from 1972, and foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine from 1991. A postwar émigré, he was active in Ukrainian student organizations, particularly as head of the Union of Ukrainian Student Societies in Austria (1947–9) and member of the executive of the Central Union of Ukrainian Students (from 1948), and completed his studies in Graz (1949). He was head of the Zarevo Ukrainian Student Association (1955–8) and general secretary of the Ukrainian Academic Society in Paris (from 1959). He continued his studies at the Ukrainian Free University (PH D, 1969) and the Sorbonne (PH D, 1976). In 1960 he began teaching at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris, and in 1969, at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, where he later became prodean of the Faculty of Philosophy. From 1968 he was scientific secretary of NTSh in Europe, and in 1987 he became its head. In 1983 he became president of the Petliura Ukrainian Library in Paris.

Zhukovsky was renowned as a historian of Bukovyna and of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church, which appointed him as a member of its Metropolitan's Council. His publications in those areas include the sections on Bukovynian history in Bukovyna: Ïï mynule i suchasne (Bukovyna: Its Past and Present, 1956), a report on the state of religion in the Ukrainian SSR (ZNTSh, vol 181 [1966]), and the introduction to Martyrolohiia ukraïns’kykh tserkov (Martyrology of the Ukrainian Churches, vol 1 of the encyclopedic Ukraïns’ka Pravoslavna Tserkva [The Ukrainian Orthodox Church], 1987). He also wrote the monograph Petro Mohyla i pytannia iednosty Tserkov (Petro Mohyla and the Question of Union of the Churches, 1969) and a critical analysis of Petro Mohyla's trebnyk in the republished Trebnyk Petra Mohyly (1988). Other works by Zhukovsky in the field of history include ‘Contributions à l’histoire de l’Académie de Kyiv (1615–1817), centre culturel et d’enseignement en Europe Orientale’ (PH D diss, 1976) and ‘L’Ukraine dans les années 1917–1933: Aspect historique’ in Actes du colloque La Renaissance nationale et culturelle en Ukraine de 1917 aux années 1930 (1986, which he also coedited), as well as articles on the Ukrainization policy, the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 in Ukraine, Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the journal Ukraïna (1914–30), and the nationalist polemics of Mykhailo Drahomanov and Borys Hrinchenko.

A longtime associate of Entsyklopediia ukraïnoznavstva (or EU, Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 10 vols, 1955–84), Zhukovsky became a member of its editorial board in 1971 and its editor in chief after the death of Volodymyr Kubijovyč in 1985. As member of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine (or AEU, 5 vols, 1984–93) editorial board from 1976 and subject editor for religion and history, he contributed a multitude of entries to that work. Zhukovsky and Orest Subtelny's article on the history of Ukraine in AEU (vol 2, 1988) was translated, updated, and published in Lviv as Narys istoriï Ukraïny (1991). Together with Ivan Dziuba, Zhukovsky also headed the editorial board of Entsyklopediia suchasnoï Ukraïny (Encyclopedia of Contemporary Ukraine, 2001–).

Danylo Husar Struk

[This article was updated in 2014.]


Encyclopedia of Ukraine