Marc Raeff

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 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

He 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. He 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 the war 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.

His 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." He 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.

Bibliography

• Siberia and the Reforms of 1822 (University of Washington Press, 1956)
• Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia (Harvest Books, 1966)
• Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772-1839 (Martinus Nijhoff, 1957; 2nd ed., 1969)
• Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1966)
• Imperial Russia, 1682-1825: The Coming of Age of Modern Russia (Knopf, 1971)
• Comprendre l'Ancien Régime russe: État et société en Russie impériale (Paris: Seuil, 1982); translated as Understanding Imperial Russia: State and Society in the Old Regime (Columbia University Press, 1984)]
• The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (Yale University Press, 1983)
• Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939 (Oxford University Press, 1990)
• Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); his essays; with bibliography of his work
• Politique et culture en Russie: 18e-20e siècles (Paris: Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1996)
• The Russian empire: the Romanovs and their books (1997)
• A bibliography of Raeff's works through 1987 is in Ezra Mendelsohn and Marshall Shatz, eds., Imperial Russia, 1700-1917: State, Society, Opposition. Essays in Honor of Marc Raeff (Northern Illinois University Press, 1988).
• Molloy, Molly, ed. "Marc Raeff: A Bibliography (1993-2008)" Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History (2011) 12#1 pp 141–159.

Further reading

• Weber, Bruce. "Marc Raeff, Russian History Scholar, Dies at 85," New York Times, Sept 28, 2008, obituary
• Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling. "Marc Raeff (1923-2008) 'A Pebble in the Water,'" Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History (2009) 10#1 pp 216–220. online