In the latter part of 1999 I had the
pleasure of spending about two and half months as a visiting scholar at
the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University. My general goal was
to examine the library holdings (both within and outside of the Slavic
Research Center), and in particular, the collections of Professors
George Y. Shevelov and George Vernadsky. Specifically, I was interested
in three topics: (a) Russian historical phonology (including the
background of early Slavic settlements in Kievan Rus' and in
present-day Russia, (b) Ukrainian dialectology (in connection with a
hypothesis of mine that Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazic Jews of
Eastern Europe, was a dialect of proto-Belarusian and proto-Ukrainian,
and not, as is generally believed, a dialect of Middle High German) and
(c) the origins of the Muslim population in Belarus', Ukraine,
Lithuania and Poland (the so-called "ithuanian Tatars"). I made
considerable progress in each of these topics while I was in Sapporo.
The purpose of this brief note is to characterize my impressions of the
Slavic holdings in Sapporo.
While the contemporary holdings and reference
materials are very comprehensive, especially in Russian, they do not
distinguish the Sapporo Slavica from many other good libraries outside
of Japan that have fine Slavic collections. The unique strength of
Sapporo as a center of Slavic research naturally can be shown to
reside, rather, in the private libraries of the world-famous
Ukrainian-American Slavist, George Shevelov, of Columbia University,
and the late Russian historian, formerly at Yale University, George
Vernadsky, and the library of Epstein of the University of Chicago. At
present, Sapporo boasts about one third of Shevelov's Slavic
linguistics library as well as the non-Slavic holdings of Vernadsky.
Both the Vernadsky and the Epstein collections have important materials
in linguistics - my area of specialization. The part of Shevelov's
library now at Hokkaido University is extremely rich in Ukrainian
dialectology - an area of great importance to me at present. Shevelov
also had unique materials published right after the close of World War
II which are probably unattainable anywhere else, see e.g. Inter
arma. Zbio池 prac ofiarowanych Prof. Kazimierzowi Nitschowi...
(Krakow, 1946). The latter contains rarely cited articles of
established Polish scholars as well as of linguists who were to become
famous after the war. Another example of a rare curiosity - this time
from Vernadsky's collection - is Le'onard Hegewald, De l'origine
de la nation russe (St. Petersburg, 1850). Hegewald attempted to
derive a number of Russian words from Hebrew solely on the grounds of
chance phonetic similarity and meaning. The work is a fine example of
this sort of "seudo-scholarship." Of considerable interest from the
Bernstein collection is the classic work on Russian paganism and
pre-Christian culture by E.V. Anichkov, Jazychestvo i drevnjaja Rus'(St.
Petersburg, 1914). The general library has a classic study by G.M.
Barats - Sobranie trudov po voprosu o evrejskom e'lemente v
pamjatnikax drevne-russkoj pis'mennosti, vols 1-2 (Paris, 1927).
Barats argued here and in other works before and after World War I
published in Kiev and the West that there is a significant Jewish
(Khazar) element in early Ukrainian (Rus' culture. He was generally
attacked, and with justification, since most of his examples were more
imaginative than factual. However, now that the Soviet Union has
collapsed, the Khazar question, once a taboo topic in the Soviet Union,
has reemerged. Recent research offers support for Barats'general
thesis, though not necessarily for his details. In connection with the
Judaized Khazars, I should mention that the North Branch of the
University Library has a copy of I. Khajnman, Evrejskaja diaspora
i Rus'(Jerusalem, 1983). The author is an Israeli emigrant of
Russian origin. I had never heard of the book until I discovered it in
Sapporo! We apparently don't have the book at Tel-Aviv University.
I could single out a rather large list of
other old, inaccessible and unusual materials, but I think the reader
is already convinced of the richness of the Hokkaido Slavic holdings.
Let me, instead, attempt a generalization. The acquisition of private
libraries from North America (and elsewhere) is a wise move on the part
of Hokkaido University. Unfortunately, the libraries are too expensive
to catalogue in America, especially now with the decline in interest in
Slavic studies there. These priceless libraries, together with the
strong acquisition of contemporary materials, will make Sapporo a major
center for Slavic research in a large number of disciplines in the very
near future. In that way, Sapporo will become a sort of "geographic
mirror image"(flanking the Russian land mass to the east) of the Slavic
collection of Helsinki University Library in Finland. The latter owes
its uniqueness, unlike Sapporo, to the fact that when Finland was a
part of the Czarist Empire (1809-1917), a copy of every book published
in Russia had to be deposited in Finland, including books in non-Slavic
languages such as Hebrew and Yiddish. As a result, Finland has a better
collection of materials from this period and source than most libraries
in Israel itself! Hokkaido University is fast becoming one of the few
major Slavic libraries in the world not located in Europe or North
America.
I want to conclude by expressing my gratitude
to the librarians of the Slavic Research Center for their efficiency
and helpfulness during my stay and to express the hope of returning in
the near future when the whole of the priceless Shevelov collection in
Slavic linguistics has been finally received and catalogued.
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