Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern[a] (born Ivan Myronovych Petrovsky,[b] April 6, 1962) is an American 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.

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.

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.

[8] “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.