May 28, 2011
Nicholas V. Riasanovsky Dies at 87; Set Standard for Russian History
By PAUL VITELLO

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/world/europe/29riasanovsky.html?_r=1


Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, a Russian émigré who came to the United States at
14, served in the Army during World War II and became one of the country’s
leading scholars of Russian history, writing a college textbook that served
as the American standard for teaching Russian history during the cold war,
died on May 14 in Oakland, Calif. He was 87.

His family said he died in a nursing home after a two-year illness.

Professor Riasanovsky taught Russian and European intellectual history at
the University of California, Berkeley, from 1957 until his retirement in
1997. He specialized in the reign of Emperor Nicholas I (1825 to 1855), a
period he examined from different perspectives in a half-dozen books
focusing on the monarchy itself, the emergence of state-sponsored
nationalism and the alienation of Russia’s intellectual elite. His writing
was known for its scrupulous examination of perceptions and misperceptions
on all sides in unfolding events.

But when Professor Riasanovsky decided to write a textbook for
undergraduates in the early 1960s, he was motivated at least in part by
concern with the perceptions that Americans had about Russia, said Mark
Steinberg, a professor of Russian history at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, and a former Riasanovsky student.

The period known as the Red Scare and the nuclear brinksmanship of the 1950s
and ’60s had “created a prejudiced view” of his homeland, and Professor
Riasanovsky “considered it crucial for students in his adopted country to
really understand Russia in all its complexity, in a balanced way,”
Professor Steinberg said.

Professor Riasanovsky’s book “A History of Russia,” scanning its history
from its ninth-century Slavic roots to the Soviet era, has been in print
continuously since it was published in 1963. (The last two editions, the
seventh and eighth, were co-authored by Mr. Steinberg.) John Challice, vice
president and publisher of higher education texts at Oxford University
Press, the book’s publisher, said it was “by a wide margin the top-selling
book in Russian history in the U.S., and has been for decades.”

Richard Pipes, a professor emeritus of Russian history at Harvard, said “A
History of Russia” filled an academic void during a time of surging need.
Before it was published, textbooks on Russian history were considered
uneven, he said, because “until World War II, Americans had very little
contact or interest in Russia.”

“Only a few universities even offered courses,” Professor Pipes said.

When demand boomed during the cold war, Professor Riasanovsky’s book became
ubiquitous.

Nicholas Valentine Riasanovsky was born on Dec. 21, 1923, in Harbin, China.
His father, Valentin A. Riasanovsky, a lawyer and legal scholar, worked
there for the Russia-Manchuria railroad. His mother, Antonia, a teacher and
novelist who wrote under the pen name Antonia Fedorovna, was acclaimed for
her work “The Family,” about the life of a Russian community in a Chinese
city. It received The Atlantic Monthly Prize for fiction in 1940.

His family remained in China until 1938, when they came to the United
States. After receiving a degree in history at the University of Oregon, Mr.
Riasanovsky served in the Army’s intelligence service during World War II.
He participated in the Normandy landings and the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war, he studied at Harvard under Michael Karpovich, whose seminars
spawned a generation of Russian scholars in the United States — including
Professor Pipes and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security
adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Riasanovsky went to Oxford University
as a Rhodes Scholar, and he received his Ph.D. in 1949.

He met his wife, Arlene, at the University of Iowa, where he held his first
teaching job. He is survived by his wife and their three children, John
Riasanovsky, of Huntington Beach, Calif.; Nicholas N. Riasanovsky, of
Berkeley; and Maria Riasanovsky, of Palo Alto, Calif. He also is survived by
a grandson, Nicholas J. Riasanovsky, and a brother, Alexander Riasanovsky,
of Tampa, Fla.

As a newcomer to the United States, Professor Riasanovsky developed a
passion for American sports and was widely recognized at Berkeley baseball,
basketball and football games as the professor who wore a suit and tie.

His love of sports might have saved his life during the Battle of the Bulge,
he said in a university oral history in 1998. Professor Riasanovsky
described being stopped by a sentry in the Ardennes Forest during a period
of great tension among the Allied troops after English-speaking Germans in
American uniforms had penetrated the lines.

To determine the true Americans, soldiers were asked specific questions.

“What he asked me was, ‘Who plays third base for the Cards?’ And I said,
‘Whitey Kurowski.’ And I passed,” Professor Riasanovsky said. “Whitey
Kurowski was a very good third baseman.”