Marc Raeff dies
Dammit. He was probably the greatest authority on 18th century Russia, and he certainly influenced me, especially his biography of Michael Speransky, the 19th century Russian statesman, and his writings on the Russian imperial bureaucracy and nobility.
Marc Raeff, Russian History Scholar, Dies at 85
Published: September 28, 2008
Marc Raeff, a Russian émigré who came to the United States at 18, served in the United States Army during World War II and became one of the country’s leading scholars of Russian history, writing the first study of the Russian diaspora, died on Sept. 20 in Teaneck, N.J. He was 85.
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Professor Marc Raeff in 2005.
The cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative illness better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, said his daughter Anne.
Professor Raeff (pronounced RY-uff), who taught Russian history and Russian studies at Columbia University from 1961 to 1988, was a specialist in imperial Russia, encompassing most of the 18th and 19th centuries, following the reign of Peter the Great and preceding the Bolshevik Revolution. His work dealt largely with Russian culture that leaned toward Europe. Professor Raeff spoke and wrote in four languages - Russian, German, French and English - and he was known as a writer with an unusually broad grasp of European history and literature.
His books included “Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia” (Harvest Books, 1966), which argued that the pursuits of the Russian intellectual class had their roots in the thinking of 18th-century Russian nobility; “Understanding Imperial Russia” (Columbia University Press, 1985), a history that traces the strains of Russian thought from the 16th century to the 20th; and “Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939” (Oxford University Press, 1990), reflecting the history of people like himself who left during the early Soviet era.
“He was very much interested in the Western aspect of Russian culture,” said Richard Pipes, a professor emeritus at Harvard and the author of “A Concise History of the Russian Revolution.” “He was a pillar of Russian historical studies in this country.”
Born in Moscow on July 28, 1923, Marc Raeff was an only child. His mother, Victoria, was a biochemist. His father, Isaac, was an engineer who was sent by the government to Berlin to oversee quality control on imported machinery.
Recalled to Moscow in 1931, Isaac Raeff decided to keep his family where they were; and in 1933, as the Nazis ascended to power, the family moved again, to Paris. There they remained until 1941, when they came to the United States.
Mr. Raeff attended City College of New York briefly but then was drafted, and he spent the war years as an interpreter in prisoner-of-war camps. Afterward, he went to Harvard, where interest in Russian history was abloom because of the war. He was a student of Michael Karpovich, whose seminars spawned a generation of Russian scholars in the United States - including Professor Pipes, Prof. Martin Malia of the University of California, Berkeley, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter - and received his Ph.D in 1950. He taught at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., from 1949 until 1961.