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.”
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