Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Who is Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern?

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is a historian, philologist and essayist, noted in particular for his studies of the institution of Cantonism, his critique of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's controversial two volume-work about Jews in Russia, Two Hundred Years Together, as well as translations of Jorge Luis Borges' works into Russian. He teaches Early Modern, Modern and East European Jewish history and Culture at Northwestern University.

He was born in Kiev in 1962 to the family of Miron Petrovsky, a noted Ukrainian philologist. He studied art and music early on, and for some time sang in the Shchedryk children's choir.

He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Moscow University and a Ph.D. in Jewish history from Brandeis University. He has been a Rothschild Fellow at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a Sensibar Visiting Professor at Spertus College in Chicago, a Visiting Scholar at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, a Research Fellow at The National Endowment for the Humanities, in Poland, and a Fulbright Scholar at Kyiv Mohyla Academy in Kiev.