HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

JAN KOZIK 247sites. He remained faithful to the professional values and discipline helearned from his first and only mentor, Professor Henryk Wereszycki.Not surprisingly, Kozik's scholarship earned greater recognitionamong scholars abroad than in his native Poland.I first met Janek in the summer of 1974. I had come to Poland toresearch Polish-Ukrainian relations in 1848 in Galicia. Naturally, Iwished to consult with Jan Kozik, whose seminal work on the pre-1848national awakening of the Galician Ukrainians had appeared a yearearlier. I soon learned that the topic I envisaged had been done — byKozik himself — in a sequential, second book on the Ukrainian nationalmovement during the revolutions of 1848-1849, which wasabout to be published. And so I lost a topic, but gained a dear friend.Over the next several years, when I visited Cracow, invariably Janekwould offer to share his one-room flat in the city. Many a time, wetalked into the early morning. I learned much from him about theacademic callousness and opportunism in People's Poland. But most ofall I came to know well and appreciate this man of deep conviction andprofessional commitment.Like many historians, Janek had come to his field of specializationby chance, as a master's candidate seeking a suitable thesis topic inProfessor Wereszycki's seminar. That initial choice became a vocation.Nothing in Janek's background suggested that he would devote hisscholarly life to the history of the Galician Ruthenes and the tortuousrelationship between Poles and Ukrainians. Janek had chosen a subjectdefinitely not easy for an aspiring scholar in the new Poland. In theimmediate postwar years, Polish historians had been discouraged fromexploring the history of the peoples of Poland's former eastern possessions.This task presumably would be handled by their Soviet colleagues.Moreover, for Poles the requisite sources for such study wereseemingly beyond reach. But Janek persisted, and eventually in theearly 1970s he became the first non-Soviet scholar to secure access —even though it was carefully prescribed — to the archives in theformer Galician capital of Lviv. The fruits of these researches werefirst presented in his pioneering articles and monograph on the Ukrainiannational movement in 1848-1849. Not only was his work the mostcomprehensive and authoritative to appear on this subject, but also itwas distinguished by a critical objectivity and a detachment notablylacking in earlier works. As the breadth of Janek's knowledge andunderstanding of the intricate national relationships in nineteenth-