In Memoriam: Professor R.W. (Bob) Davies 1925-2021

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From: On Behalf Of Michael Berry Sent: 16 April 2021 18:32 Subject: Professor R.W. (Bob) Davies 1925-2021 I am sorry to have to report that Professor R.W. (Bob) Davies the eminent economic historian of the USSR and director of CREES at the University of Birmingham for many years died earlier this week. His knowledge and wisdom will be missed by […]

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Image of Sakharov, Once the Conscience of the Nation, an Increasingly Blurred Figure for Russians, Lev Gudkov Says

Map of Russia and Russian Flag adapted from images at state.gov

The month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Academician Andrey Sakharov who developed the hydrogen bomb … then became the leading spokesman for humanism and democracy against the Soviet regime […]

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RUSSIALINK: “2020: The People Russia Lost” – Moscow Times

Covid-19 Coronavirus file photo, adapted from image at cdc.gov

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Dec. 31, 2020) In 2020 the number of deaths in Russia of prominent and beloved public figures was devastatingly high, many from the coronavirus, but some from other causes as well. The performing arts were particularly hard hit by Covid-19, since by the nature of the professions, people at work cannot be masked or socially […]

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JRL NEWSLINK: “Stephen Cohen (1938-2020): Professor Emeritus, NYU Russian and Slavic Studies” – NYU Jordan Center/ Yanni Kotsonis

Bookcase file photo, adapted from image at nlm.nih.gov

“Steve was hired to NYU after … Princeton. He was a masterful lecturer who packed in 400 students each time he taught his survey of Soviet history, and he helped keep alive Soviet and Russian studies at a time when interest was falling […]”

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Yermolai Solzhenitsyn: “Re: Some information on SolzhenitsynCenter.org”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn file photo

Subject: Some information on solzhenitsyncenter.org Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2019 From: Yermolai Solzhenitsyn <yermolai_solzhenitsyn@mckinsey.com> To: davidjohnson@starpower.net Dear David, We saw recently a piece on JRL Russia Insider, russia-insider.com, March 18, 2019 Great Russian Documentary on Life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Video) [https://russia-insider.com/en/great-russian-documentary-life-alexander-solzhenitsyn-video/ri26536], where the authors were wondering whether there were English language copies of all the three films in question. We […]

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NEWSLINK: “IN MEMORIAM: SEWERYN BIALER (1926-2019)” – Columbia University Harriman Institute

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“Seweryn Bialer, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Columbia University, MacArthur Fellow, and survivor of Auschwitz, died on February 8, 2019, at his home in Manhattan. …”

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NEWSLINK: “The extraordinary life of Lyudmila Alexeyeva — Meduza remembers a Russian human rights icon” – Meduza

Lyudmila Alekseyeva file photo

“Late on December 8, Russian human rights icon Lyudmila Alexeyeva passed away at the age of 91. Since the mid-1990s, she led the Moscow Helsinki Group, earning the respect of both state officials and the anti-Kremlin opposition. Alexeyeva worked with everyone equally in pursuit of her mission: the protection of people’s rights by all means available. Meduza’s Andrey Kozenko looks […]

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NEWSLINK: “James H. Billington, 89, Dies; Led Library of Congress Into Digital Age” – New York Times/Robert D. McFadden

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“James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress for nearly three decades, who led the nation’s treasure house of knowledge into the digital age and added millions of books, films and cultural artifacts to its historic collections, including a trove of tweets, died on Tuesday in Washington. He was 89. His daughter Susan Harper Billington said the cause was complications of […]

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NEWSLINK: “James H. Billington, long-reigning librarian of Congress, dies at 89” – Washington Post

Library of Congress Aerial View adapted from image at usembassy.gov with credit LOC, Photographer: Carol M. Highsmith, adapted by Steven C. Welsh www.stevencwelsh.info :: www.stevencwelsh.com

“James H. Billington, an eminent American scholar of Russian culture who reigned for three decades as librarian of Congress, propelling the expansion of the world’s largest library but struggling to lead it through the challenges of the digital age, died Nov. 20 at a hospital in Washington. He was 89. …”

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NEWSLINK: “Walter Laqueur obituary; Influential but pessimistic historian who tried to find answers to the Holocaust and was among the first scholars to study terrorism” – The Times (London)

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“… Laqueur’s curiosity, interest in the future and anxiety remained into his nineties …. As always he was interested in the attacks societies faced, and how internal weaknesses made them vulnerable. … He spoke sometimes of hope, but the searing experience of seeing the society he was born into collapsing into barbarism had never left him. Walter Laqueur, historian, was […]

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RUSSIALINK: “Moscow govt formally allows Oct. 29 remembrance of victims of repression on Lubyanka Square” – Interfax

FSB Headquarters Building file photo

MOSCOW. Oct 23 (Interfax) – The Moscow government has formally granted Memorial’s request to hold a ceremony commemorating victims of political repression at the traditional venue near the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square on October 29, Yelena Romanova from the city administration’s regional security department said. “There was an interagency meeting today to discuss the provision of public peace and […]

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NEWSLINK: “Memorial Service for Professor Richard Pipes” – Harvard University, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies

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Friday, September 21, 2018 – 3:00pm to 5:00pm Memorial Church, Harvard Yard Please join us for a memorial service celebrating the life of Professor Richard E. Pipes (1923-2018). RSVPs to daviscenter@fas.harvard.edu or 617-495-4037 are welcome. Co-sponsored by the Pipes family, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Harvard University Department of History. For more information, please call […]

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Ira Straus: “Richard Pipes RIP”

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Subject: Richard Pipes RIP Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 From: Ira Straus <irastraus@aol.com> Richard Pipes, who passed Thursday May 17, was a great scholar and thinker who served America well. He was a prophet whom we should honor today, the more so as he was not honored for it when it counted by the America he served. In his two […]

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NEWSLINK: “Richard Pipes, Historian of Russia and Reagan Aide, Dies at 94” – New York Times/William Grimes

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“Richard Pipes, the author of a monumental, sharply polemical series of historical works on Russia, the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik regime, and a top adviser to the Reagan administration on Soviet and Eastern European policy, died on Thursday at a nursing home near his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 94. …”

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NEWSLINK: “In Memoriam: Karen Dawisha” – Miami University, Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies

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“Karen Dawisha, the former Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and director of Miami University’s Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, died Wednesday, April 11, after a long illness. She was 68. Dawisha joined the Miami faculty in 2000, becoming the first Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and the founding director of the Havighurst Center for […]

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IN MEMORIAM [Link]: “Donald Barry Obituary” – Legacy.com

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“Donald D. Barry, 83 of Bethlehem, died January 31, 2018 at home surround by his family. Born in East Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of the late Ruth May Barry and John L. Barry. Don was educated at Ohio University and Syracuse University. During his time in graduate school he spent a year at Moscow University in the early […]

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Arseny Roginsky: Giving Russia its history back; On 18 December, Arseny Roginsky, historian, dissident and one of the founders of Russia’s Memorial society, passed away. He will be sorely missed.

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(opendemocracy.net – Mikhail Kaluzhsky – December 20, 2017) Mikhail Kaluzhsky is Lead Russian-Language Editor at oDR. “For me, the archive (and I mean, of course, only literary and historical archives) is the natural continuation of the library. And unpublished archival documents are in no way different from published documents, you can treat them as accidentally unpublished or as-yet-unpublished. I believe […]

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NEWSLINK: “Marshall I. Goldman, Expert on Russian Economy, Dies at 87” – New York Times

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“Marshall I. Goldman, who diagnosed deficiencies in Moscow’s economic policies for decades and was among the first Kremlinologists to predict the downfall of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, died on Aug. 2 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87. …”

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Tributes to Anton Nossik, Pioneer of Russia’s Internet, Cut Across Divides; The Internet’s ‘Pushkin’ died on July 9, just days after turning 51

File Image of Laptop Computer, Tables and Mobile Device, adapted from image at energy.gov

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova, Michele Berdy – July 10, 2017) When Anton Nossik, the “godfather” of the Russian Internet, died from a heart attack in the early hours of July 9, heartfelt condolences poured in across generations and political divides. The poet Lev Rubinshtein remembered him from childhood as a “wunderkind.” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described Nossik […]

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Robert Donaldson : Eulogy delivered at a Celebration of Life for Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko file photo, adapted from image at archives.gov

Subject: Eulogy for #Yevtushenko Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2017 From: Robert Donaldson <robert-donaldson@utulsa.edu> Here is a somewhat shortened version of the Eulogy I delivered last evening at the University of Tulsa’s “Celebration of Life” service for Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who taught for us for a quarter of a century. The service featured readings (in English and Russian) by two of his […]

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NEWSLINK: INTERVIEW AND INTRODUCTION: “Yevgeny Yevtushenko – His Poetry Engaged and Enraged Readers at Home and Abroad [2017 reprint of 1987 Interview” – The Progressive/ Yevgeny Yevtushenko/ Katrina vanden Heuvel

Yevgeny Yevtushenko file photo, adapted from image at archives.gov

“Editor’s Note: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, internationally acclaimed Russian poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and film director died on April 1, 2017. He was 83. In honor of his tremendous work and legacy, we are sharing an interview he did with Katrina vanden Heuvel for our magazine in 1987. …”

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NEWSLINK: “Yevgeny Yevtushenko obituary. Rebellious Russian poet and author of Babi Yar, who became a celebrity in the west” – The Guardian (UK)/Robin Milner-Gulland

Yevgeny Yevtushenko file photo, adapted from image at archives.gov

“… Yevtushenko was from early on obsessed with travel, first within the USSR and then, as invitations came in from abroad, anywhere in the world he could manage to get to. By 1962 he had become a celebrity outside Russia, and featured on the cover of Time magazine. His many public readings in the west were packed, and a slim volume […]

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RUSSIALINK TASS: “Funeral ceremony for famed poet Yevtushenko anticipated on April 4”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko file photo, adapted from image at archives.gov

“The funeral ceremony for poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko will take place next Tuesday at the earliest, his close friend Mikhail Morgulis told TASS on Sunday. Celebrated Soviet and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko died in the United States aged 84 on Saturday. …”

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NEWSLINK Columbia University: Save the Date: CATHARINE THEIMER NEPOMNYASHCHY’s Memorial Service (October 2)

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Friday, October 2, 2015 2:00 – 4:00 pm James Memorial Chapel at Union Theological Seminary (3041 Broadway at 121st St) A memorial service will be held for Professor Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy on Friday, October 2, 2015 in the James Memorial Chapel at Union Theological Seminary (3041 Broadway at 121st St). The service will be followed by a reception at the Diana Center, […]

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OBITUARY: Gennady Seleznyov, night rider of Russia’s rowdy parliament

Russian State Duma Building file photo

(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Nick Allen in Berlin – July 23, 2015) With President Vladimir Putin’s executive fist dominating the ‘vertical of power’, while parliament toes the Kremlin line, it’s easy to forget Russia’s heyday of real rough-and-tumble oppositional party politics in the first years after the Soviet collapse. So defiant from the outset was the legislature, still […]

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In Memoriam: Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, 1951-2015

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Subject: In Memoriam: Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, 1951-2015 Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 From: The Harriman Institute <harrimanevents@gmail.com> Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy 1951-2015 The Harriman Institute is profoundly saddened to announce the passing of our friend and colleague Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, who has been a cherished member of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, and Barnard College communities since she enrolled as a […]

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NEWSLINK: Bwog: Barnard Professor Catharine Nepomnyashchy Has Passed Away

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Dear Members of the Barnard Community, It is with tremendous sadness and a very heavy heart that I write to inform you of the death of Catharine Nepomnyashchy, a much beloved member of our faculty for twenty-eight years. Cathy died Saturdaymorning in her home after a courageous battle with lung cancer. She is survived by a beautiful and loving daughter, […]

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NEWSLINK: Valentin Rasputin, Russian Writer Who Led ‘Village Prose’ Movement, Dies at 77

Map of Russia and Russian Flag adapted from images at state.gov

Valentin Rasputin, a patriarch of the so-called village prose writers who emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1960s to address moral and environmental issues and depict the remains of a rural Russia about to be consumed by industrialization, died here on Saturday. He was 77. …   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/world/europe/valentin-rasputin-russian-writer-who-led-village-prose-movement-dies-at-77.html?_r=0

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NEWSLINK: Remembering Ned Keenan

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(March 11, 2015) It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Edward L. Keenan, a medieval Russian historian, who died on March 6, 2015. The obituary below, sent out by the chair of the History Department at Harvard University, was written by Jan M. Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, and Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and […]

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Ned Keenan [from Francis A. Boyle]

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Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 13:09:38 +0000 From: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle@illinois.edu> Subject: Ned Keenan I note with a heavy heart the death of my teacher, mentor and friend Ned Keenan. Ned was my PhD Examiner in the field of Russian History. Ned also wrote a very fine letter of recommendation for me to become a professor. Ned was always very fair, balanced […]

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Ned Keenan [from William Hill]

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Subject: Ned Keenan Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2015 From: William Hill <williamhhill@gmail.com> Thank you very much for including the sad news of Ned Keenan’s passing in JRL #51. I had not heard and appreciated reading the tribute to him. Ned was my tutor and thesis advisor my senior year at Harvard. Although he completed the requirements for his doctorate a […]

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Bolshoi Packed for Tribute to Legendary Singer Yelena Obraztsova

Bolshoi Theater file photo

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Layli Foroudi – January 15, 2015) Hundreds of Russians paid their last respects to renowned and much-loved opera singer Yelena Obraztsova in the Bolshoi Theater on Wednesday. Roses, carnations and sunflowers in all sizes and quantities were tearfully and lovingly carried up the theater’s dark aisle to be placed at the base of her casket, […]

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MEMORIAL SERVICE: Reminder: Peter Juviler Memorial Service, Friday September 20 in New York City

Columbia University Campus with Main Building

Subject: Reminder: Peter Juviler Memorial Service 9/20 From: The Harriman Institute <harrimanevents@gmail.com> Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 Columbia/Harriman Institute Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies Reminder: Peter Juviler Memorial Service A memorial service will be held for Professor Emeritus Peter Juviler on Friday, September 20, 2013 at 4 pm in the James Memorial Chapel at Union Theological Seminary (3041 Broadway […]

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SAVE THE DATE: Peter Juviler’s Memorial Service, September 20 in New York City

Columbia University Campus with Main Building

Subject: Save the Date: Peter Juviler’s Memorial Service. September 20. From: The Harriman Institute <harrimanevents@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 Columbia/Harriman Institute Save the Date: Peter Juviler’s Memorial Service A memorial service will be held for Professor Emeritus Peter Juviler on Friday, September 20, 2013 at 4 pm in the James Memorial Chapel at Union Theological Seminary (3041 Broadway at […]

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Berezovsky buried in England

Boris Berezovsky file photo

(Interfax – LONDON/MOSCOW, May 8, 2013) Russian business tycoon Boris Berezovsky was buried Brookwood cemetery, Surrey, in Great Britain, a source close to the businessman told Interfax on Wednesday. “The burial service was conducted in the family circle, while the burial ceremony itself was attended by 50 to 70 people – the family and friends of the late oligarch,” the […]

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