Name Marc Raeff | ||
 | ||
Died September 20, 2008, Teaneck, New Jersey, United States Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Books Origins of the Russian i, Understanding imperial Russia, Russia Abroad: A Cultural, Michael Speransky, The well‑ordered police state | ||
Education Harvard University (1950) | ||
Marc Raeff (1923-2008) (pronounced RY-uff) was a specialist in Russian history who taught at Columbia University in New York, 1961-88. He held the Bakhmeteff chair in Russian Studies.
Harvard University historian Richard Pipes says, "He was very much interested in the Western aspect of Russian culture. He was a pillar of Russian historical studies in this country."
Career
Raeff was born in Moscow July 28, 1923, the only child of Isaac and Victoria Raeff, who were Jewish. His father was an engineer, and his mother was a biochemist. The government sent them to Berlin to oversee quality control on machinery destined for Russia. They refused to return to Moscow in 1927; in 1933 they moved to Paris. They moved to the U.S. in 1941.
Raeff attended schools in German, French and English, but his native tongue was Russian. He wrote in English, French, German, and Russian, and also read Italian and Polish.
Raeff served in the U.S. Army in World War II as an interpreter. He attended Harvard, working with Professor Michael Karpovich, whose trained numerous scholars. He received his Ph.D in 1950. He taught at Clark University from 1949 until 1961, when he moved to Columbia. He married Lillian Gottesman in 1951; they had two daughters.
Raeff's research focused on the Russian Empire, with an emphasis on the Russian intelligentsia at home and in diaspora. Wirtschafter argues that he always "stressed the complexity and dynamism of the social and political arrangements that defined Imperial Russia". Raeff directed numerous PhD dissertations. His teaching and writing was free of ideological overtones of the sort encouraged by the Cold War. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957.