Petrovsky-Shtern was born in
Kyiv in 1962 to the family of Miron Petrovsky (Петровський Мирон Семенович), a Ukrainian
philologist. His birth name was Ivan Petrovsky, as attested by his published translations of
Jorge Luis Borges.
Scholar He holds a
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in
Comparative Literature from
Moscow University and a second
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in
Jewish History from
Brandeis University. He has been a Rothschild Fellow at
Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, a Sensibar Visiting Professor at
Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership 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
Kyiv.
Scholarship Petrovsky-Shtern’s scholarship focuses on the social, political, and cultural history of Jews in Eastern Europe, particularly in the territories of the Russian Empire, Poland–Lithuania, and Ukraine. His work frequently reexamines established narratives in Jewish historiography through archival research in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian sources. In
Jews in the Russian Army, 1827–1917: Drafted into Modernity (2009), he studies the institution of
Cantonism and the conscription of Jewish youth into the Russian military, arguing that military service played a significant role in shaping modern Jewish identities in the Russian Empire. In
The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009), Petrovsky-Shtern explores the emergence of modern
Ukrainian Jewish identity in the nineteenth century, contending that some Jews aligned themselves with Ukrainian national movements rather than with imperial Russian structures. His book
The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe (2015) challenges the traditional depiction of the
shtetl as economically stagnant and socially isolated, arguing instead that many Jewish communities in early modern Poland–Lithuania were economically integrated and culturally dynamic.
Artist Petrovsky-Shtern had several solo exhibitions, including such venues as the French Institute in July 2019 in
Kyiv,
Ukraine; the Ukrainian Institute of America in spring 2015 in
New York City;
Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in February–March 2014 in
Chicago; and in November 2012 at the museum of the
Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. Petrovsky-Shtern analyses the folkways and fantasies of his Jewish and Ukrainian heritage through “revisiting foundational narratives from the Hebrew Bible, Eastern European Jewish folk-characters and folk-tales, images and artifacts from his native Ukraine, and—of course—the Holocaust,” wrote Jerome Chanes in Jewish Week. “Although Petrovsky-Shtern’s main fields of interest are history and literature, ranging from the
Jewish Middle Ages to Hasidic folklore, from the prose of
Gabriel Garcia Marquez to the
Ukrainian renaissance of the 1920s, it is on canvas that the depth of his knowledge of various religions and cultures is transformed into a mysterious world of tales and myths,” wrote the poet
Vasyl Makhno. ==Awards==