Slavists Outside the Slavic World: America in Letters and Memoirs of D. Chyzhevs’kyy, Y. Shevel’ov and W. Weintraub (late 1940s – early 1950s)

The articles attempts at the reconstruction of the image of America in letters and memoirs of Dmytro Chyzhevs’kyy, Yuriy Shevel’ov, and Wiktor Weintraub, East‑European scholars who after WWII greatly contributed to the formation of the image of Slavic civilization in the West. They immigrated to the US in late 1940s – early 1950s expecting Harvard to be the site for their further academic endeavours since the after – WW II Europe could not satisfy their academic needs. Interaction with the American academic community developed differently for each scholar, which had its impact on their further careers. Impressions from America and Harvard in particular in their correspondence generally testifies to the their hopes and expectations, while memoirs contain a balanced or even distanced re‑evaluation of those. Historical context within which these writings are viewed suggests that for each scholar the image of America was dynamic and different due to their age, personality, character, previous immigrant life experience, and their cultural background and academic worldview. Unlike Chyzhevs’kyy, these factors suited well Shevel’ov and Weintraub in terms of adjustment to the reality and expectations of the New World. Further study of these scholars’ biographies from this perspective seems particularly topical under the circumstances of recent reformatting of the Slavic Studies as a discipline