Leonid Rudnytzky

Who is Leonid Rudnytzky?

Leonid Ivanovych Rudnytzky is a linguist, professor of German, Slavic and Ukrainian Studies, co-editor of numerous American and Ukrainian encyclopedias, and scholar of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Son of Ivan-Theodore Rudnytzky – a lawyer, UGA centurion, November rebellion co-organizer and ZUNR military attaché – and Yulia Rudnytzka from the Luzhnytzky family.

Leonid Rudnytzky belongs to those scholars who grew up among the Ukrainian emigration in American and German environments. Sometimes he would say, "I am an American scholar. Life made me so... The fate of Ukrainians in the diaspora was not easy at the beginning. Persecution, inadaptability to a new life, ignorance of the language and financial problems made life harder. “I saw and experienced it with many people who were close to me" - Rudnytzky would recall later. But there was some special consciousness in the immigrants’ minds – at any cost to pass the test of endurance and to stand on their own two feet. The important fact is that those people emigrated for political reasons.