Alexander J. Motyl

Alexander John Motyl (Ukrainian: Олександр Мотиль; born October 21, 1953, in New York City) is an American historian, political scientist, poet, writer, translator and artist-painter. He is a resident of New York City. He is professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey and a specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the Soviet Union.

Alexander John Motyl

Biography

Motyl's parents immigranted from Lviv, Ukraine. He graduated from Regis High School in New York City in 1971. He studied at Columbia University, graduating with a BA in History in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1984.[1] Motyl has taught at Columbia University, Lehigh University, and Harvard University and is currently professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.[2]

Career

Motyl is the author of six academic books and editor or co-editor of over fifteen volumes.[3] Motyl has written extensively on the Soviet Union, Ukraine, revolutions, nations and nationalism, and empires.[4] All his work is highly conceptual and theoretical, attempting to ground political science in a firm philosophical base, while simultaneously concluding that all theories are imperfect and that theoretical pluralism is inevitable. In Imperial Ends (2001), he posited a theoretical framework for examining the structure of empires as a political structure.[5] Motyl describes three types of imperial structures: continuous, discontinuous, and hybrid.[6] Motyl also posits varying degrees of empire: formal, informal, and hegemonic. He discussed the Russian example in an earlier book, The Post Soviet Nations.[7]

Other activities

Motyl is also active as a poet, a writer of fiction, and a visual artist.[4] A collection of his poems have appeared in "Vanishing Points".[8] His novels include Whiskey Priest (2005), Who Killed Andrei Warhol (2007), Flippancy (2009), The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia (2012), Sweet Snow (2013), Fall River, Vovochka (2015) and Ardor (2016).[4][8] He has done readings of his fiction and poetry at New York's Cornelia Street Cafe and Bowery Poetry Club. Motyl has had one-man shows of his art in New York, Toronto, and Philadelphia.[4]

In 2008–2014, he collaborated with former Andy Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet on a play entitled Andy vs. Adolf, which attempted to explore the similarities and differences between Warhol and Hitler. Although two readings of the play took place, the work was never produced. Motyl subsequently described his working relationship with Ultra Violet in an essay in the magazine 34th Parallel.

In a review of his novel The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, Michael Johnson wrote in The American Spectator:

Protagonist Volodymyr Frauenzimmer was born of a rape at the end of World War II when his mother was a Ukrainian Auschwitz guard who hates Jews and his father a Stalinist thug and Jew who hates Ukrainians. They married but lived in separate rooms and rarely spoke to each other... Alexander Motyl was clearly having great fun when he wrote his latest book, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, a comic novel with half-serious historical underpinnings. It manages to amuse and challenge without losing its headlong momentum into the realm of absurdist literature.[9]

Selected works
Academic books
  • The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919-1929, (East European Monographs, no. 65; Columbia University Press, 1980). ISBN 978-0-91471-058-5
  • Will the Non-Russians Rebel? State, Ethnicity, and Stability in the USSR, (Cornell University Press, 1987). ISBN 978-0-80141-947-8
  • Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality: Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR (Columbia University Press, 1990). ISBN 978-0-23107-326-4
  • Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism, (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993). ISBN 978-0-87609-131-9
  • Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities, (Columbia University Press, 1999). ISBN 978-0-23111-431-8
  • Imperial Ends: The Decline, Collapse, and Revival of Empires, (Columbia University Press, 2001). ISBN 978-0-23112-110-1
Editor
  • The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, co-edited with Bohdan Klid, (University of Alberta Press, 2012). ISBN 978-1-89486-529-6
  • Russia’s Engagement with the West: Transformation and Integration in the Twenty-First Century, co-edited with Blair Ruble and Lilia Shevtsova, (Routledge, 2005). ISBN 978-0-76561-442-1
  • The Encyclopedia of Nationalism, 2 vols., (Academic Press, 2000). ISBN 978-0-12227-230-1

References
  1. "BOOKSHELF". Columbia College Today. September 2005. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
  2. "Faculty Q&A with Alexander Motyl". Rutgers Focus. December 31, 1969. Archived from the original on January 6, 2012. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
  3. "Alexander Motyl". European Leadership Network.
  4. "Dr. Alexander Motyl, a scholar and an artist". newark.rutgers.edu. Rutgers University.
  5. Motyl, Alexander J. (2001). "Information". Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-12110-1.
  6. Bromund, Ted (May 2002). "Bromund on Motyl, 'Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires'". networks.h-net.org. Humanities and Social Sciences Online.
  7. Kirrilov, Victor B. (April 1, 1996). "Book Reviews : The Post-Soviet Nations. Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR edited by Alexander J. Motyl. New York, Columbia University Press, 1995". International Relations. 13 (1): 104–106. doi:10.1177/004711789601300109.
  8. Saunders, Robert A. (December 8, 2015). "On Putin, Politics, and Popular Culture: An Interview with Alexander J. Motyl". e-ir.info. E-International Relations.
  9. Johnson, Michael (July 18, 2011). "A Romp Through History". The American Spectator. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2015.
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