Professor Ladis Kristof passed away

On June 15, Portland State University professor Ladis Kristof passed away at the age of 91 in Yamhill, Oregon.

Professor Kristof was born outside Chernivtsi into an Armenian and Polish family. At a time of great inter-ethnic tension, he learned to speak Ukrainian and reached out to the Ukrainian community. After spending time in jail and concentration camps in Romania and Yugoslavia in the 1940s, he escaped to the West. In 1955, Professor Kristof earned a B.A. in political science at Reed College (Oregon), where he wrote a senior thesis on Ukrainian nationalism. In 1969, he received a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago, where he studied the political geography of nation-building. He taught and conducted research at Temple University, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and Portland State University.

As a scholar, Professor Kristof helped to establish Ukraine as a subject for study in political science. His writings encouraged novel approaches to the formation of Russian national identity and lay the groundwork for contemporary scholarship on nationalism.

Alexandra Hrycak

a column written by Ladis’ son, Nicholas Kristof, that appeared this week in the New York Times.