* * *

There is a kind of established narrative of the development of Russian historiography in the United States, which, briefly recapitulated, goes from the situation of near aridity before World War II to an awakened interest in Russia in the postwar period. Combined with the realization by various governmental officials that the country needed specialists with knowledge and understanding of Russia’s language and culture (along with that of other countries), this interest led to massive funding by several foundations and governmental programs aimed at educating much needed specialists. Research centers were established – first at Columbia and Harvard, then at many other universities. By and large, this is a narrative of organizations, institutions, and necessities. Another narrative exists, so to say, on its margins. The second one involves human agents who played leading roles, assumed responsibility for necessary activities, undertook important steps on their own initiative, etc. Karpovich played a very important role in this second narrative, about which a few words would not be superfluous.^[1]
The article that highlights the major signposts in both narratives about the development of the field belongs to Horace Lunt.^[2] In it he points out that in the United States the field of Slavic Studies was established by historians, unlike, for example, in Austria, where linguists were at the forefront. Different influences were behind the changes in different universities. It was the historian, Archibald Carey Coolidge, who “was able to persuade Harvard to hire first Wiener, and then, in 1927, his own successor, the historian Michael Karpovich.” At Columbia University it was Simmons who restructured the Slavic Department. In 1948, at the time of the establishment of the Russian Research Center, Karpovich “was persuaded to set up a new department.” With various figures in the background playing key roles of financial and administrative support, the two most instrumental figures in the construction of the discipline were Simmons at Columbia and Karpovich at Harvard. Without them “there would have been no students, and no departmental organization to provide the institutional setting. Historians of our field must give great credit to Columbia for aiding Simmons and also to Harvard for the 1949 renaissance.”^[3] In addition, the footnote to this paragraph reads: “Karpovich published relatively little, but he was a devoted and effective teacher whose influence on generations of Harvard undergraduates and graduates shows up in many fields. His meticulous and time-consuming labors as editor of the Novyi zhurnal must also count as contribution to our field.”^[4]
Malia’s obituary article, to which there have already been several references, acknowledging Karpovich’s contribution, says that he “successfully transplanted to America to survive the pressures of the Communist menace and the Russian soul … the spirit … of which all Russian studies in this country were most in need amidst the turmoils of the cold war” and that “American historians of Russia in particular have been more than fortunate to have M. M. as one of their principal patrons.”^[5]
There is one peculiarity about Malia’s statement: he repeated it in his 1998 essay, “Clio in Tauris” and then again in 2004, in a posthumously published essay dedicated to Terrence Emmons^[6] insisting, as if defending his own memory, that it “was Karpovich, whose seminars of 1947 and 1948, totaling some twenty individuals, produced most of the first generation of American historians of Russia, who then trained the next generation, which is now producing its own students.”^[7] The contexts of these two publications were different, the first one being a rather long chapter subtitled “American historiography on Russia”. The recapitulation of the same statement in three different contexts and at such a distance from each other in time begs the answer about the meaning of the recapitulation itself. So, let me address the first context.
The subject matter of the chapter is in the subtitle. The chronological context is the twentieth century. It means that the context can be reduced to the angle from which the twentieth century is viewed. I will allow myself to cite the entire first paragraph to save myself otherwise necessary explanations:

“In the same way that Russia under Communism was not “just another European country” but a world set provocatively apart, so American, and in general all Western, historiography about Russia in this century could not be the “normal” investigation of yet another European national story. After 1917, in the remote and mysterious new Soviet world – the land of the barbaric yet vital Scythians as the visionary poet, Aleksandr Blok, warned the “old world” of Europe – our familiar, classical Clio had to speak under constraints quite unknown in the established historiographies of the West. American and Western historiography on Russia was thus as firmly set apart in modern scholarship as was its subject matter in modern culture and politics.”^[8]

The story of American historiography of Russia is thus placed in its proper context, starting with “the ideological pretension of Soviet Communism to represent … the dawn of mankind’s real history under Socialism triumphant,” followed by the impossibility to ignore this pretension “as some temporary revolutionary exaggeration” because “the existence of militant Communist parties around the world” and the power of the Soviet state were real. The essay also gives a fair treatment to the ideological difficulties and problems that the postwar situation created at home by and for those susceptible to “the lure of the socialist ideal” which “fed on the outside world’s guilt at its own inadequacies” and “hope for a better future for which the new Russia might be a model.” Since the Soviet Union had remained a threat until its collapse, “the Communist specter became an actor in the domestic politics of all other nations, and everyone had to take a position, whether explicit or implicit, about how to come to terms with it.”^[9] The suffering group of this situation became “fledgling American historians” of Russia when they had to start constructing their field. Soviet historiography being of little help, “the novices’ principal resource was living contact with émigré Russian historians professionally trained under the Old Regime.” To the habitually named Vernadsky, Karpovich, Roman Jakobson and Alexander Gerschenkron, Malia adds Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary (SR) exiles in New York and then recapitulates the statement that “the most important of these living contacts was Karpovich...” which was already cited.^[10]
Toward the end of this chapter Malia’s narrative shifts to the emergence of social historians and the replacement of the totalitarian model with modernization theory, and the latter’s ultimate failure to understand Soviet reality. The story ends with a quick visit to the post-Soviet historiography of Russia in Russia of which the following observation is worth noting:

“For the Soviet period of their history, unfortunately, these scholars will find abroad only too much of their own recent tradition… For the history of the Old Regime, however, these scholars have the more promising recourse of building bridges back to their own pre-Revolutionary tradition; and in this process Western scholarship – political, intellectual, and social – on old Russia can play a role.”^[11]

This last sentence leads us to Malia’s other publication mentioned earlier, “The Historiographical Legacy of Terence Emmons.” This short essay accords Karpovich one page out of four. In its general theme, the piece illustrates the difference of conditions under which his generation and that of Emmons studied Russian history, meaning the easing of the Cold War tensions and consequent opportunities that opened up for younger generation of scholars. A graduate of Berkeley, that is, a student of Malia and Riasanovsky, Emmons “had ample opportunity to hear echoes of Karpovich’s views on Russia’s development.”^[12] Emmons’s mentor in Moscow became Petr Andreevich Zaionchkovskii, who took a personal interest in the American student. Skillfully weaving political and historical motifs into his narrative, Malia constructed a wonderful paradigm through which Emmons and his works on two liberal interludes in Russia’s histories found themselves “in a direct line of succession from the Old Regime historiography.”^[13] The opening sentence of this piece introduces the experience of Malia’s generation of historians by repeating that it is no exaggeration “to say that the beginning of serious study of Russian history of the United States can be dated to two ‘foundational’ seminars taught by Mikhail Karpovich in 1946 and 1947 at Harvard University.” What follows is a condensed version of Malia’s chapter just discussed together with a sketch of Karpovich’s main contribution to the process. “It was Karpovich, more than any other single figure, who gave this postwar study of Russian history its first paradigm. …The field could not have had a better founder.”^[14] By positioning Karpovich, historian and teacher, in the context of “colossal American ignorance about Russia” and then positioning Zaionchkovskii in the Soviet context in which his “ambition in life was the redemption of modern Russian history,” Malia creates his own paradigm aimed at the reconciliation of two separate historiographies, and he does this by bringing together two historians whose meeting in our ideologically divided world was precluded – Zaionchkovsky and Karpovich.
Malia’s insistence on repeating the same evaluation of Karpovich does have a meaning of its own. It is the defense of a Russian historiographical tradition transmitted to his generation by Karpovich and then by him to his students. It is also, I believe, a kind of defense of his teacher, whose name and contributions tended for some time to be either omitted from historiographical accounts or misrepresented. The attempt to understand why will constitute the last part of this article. Two cases will be my focus. The first is the story of editors’ addresses in The Russian Review, the second is a Russian-language article by Alfred Rieber,^[15] conceived as a comprehensive account about the history of historiography of Russia in the United States, among the first attempts of its kind. Its goals are “to identify (vyiavit’) those social and societal as well as personal, ideological and methodological factors which affected the study of Russian history in the U.S.A.”^[16] I will begin with the first case.
A survey of The Russian Review editors’ addresses deals with the way the history of that journal is presented, and implicitly with Karpovich’s contribution to the field of Russian history as it was reflected in the journal. Karpovich was the journal’s co-editor in 1941-1946, editor in 1947-1948, and was associated with it “from the time of its establishment,” and, as W. H. Chamberlin, the journal’s first editor, testified, “his counsel, co-operation and experience were of inestimable benefit to this publication.”^[17] If one is in need of information about some periodical, the natural place to turn to would be the periodical’s anniversary issue. The Russian Review’s sixtieth anniversary issue^[18] indeed has three articles dedicated to its history. Its first article, however, by Eve Levin, the journal’s present editor, omits Karpovich’s name altogether. Instead, it provides some strange information, such as:

“In 1941, Slavic studies as a distinct field scarcely existed in the United States. Yet a small number of dedicated scholars, mostly émigrés from Russia at the time of the Revolution, had begun to establish programs in Russian language, literature, and history at universities and colleges.”^[19]

According to another statement, “American-born specialists … placed their mark on the journal from the first issue, making it more than an organ for displaced Russians.”^[20] The beginnings of the Russian field, of which the Review is a part, seem to constitute an interpretative problem, at least for this journal. The problems of interpretation, as the same article shows, are somehow associated with the words “émigrés” and “the Cold War”. Confusion creeps in each time these words turn up, as in the following passage:

“Although the Cold War decisively shaped Russian studies as an academic discipline, its effects on The Russian Review were muted. From the beginning the journal took a skeptical view of the Soviet Union, in keeping with its largely émigré clientele.”^[21]

To set the record straight once again: the tone of the Review was set mainly by its first editor, W. H. Chamberlin, whose views were, by and large, aggressively anti-Communist, although toned down in the Review’s articles.^[22] Be that as it may, the following questions beg answers: Why couldn’t the anniversary issue carry a straight-forward historical account of the Review’s inception? At what point and why the two different realities – the Cold War and émigrés – became linked in one causal chain as if the latter bore responsibility for the former? And – finally – why was Karpovich’s name omitted?
The Russian Review has had a tradition of “From the editor” addresses to readers from the very beginning. Its first issue had a “Foreword” written by William Henry Chamberlin, its first editor.^[23] At the time (November, 1941) the Review was the first journal of its kind. Chamberlin’s address described the apparent need “for a review that would endeavor to interpret Russia as it has been, as it is, as it may be in the future.” It talked of a non-existent Russian field in the U. S., sketched Russia’s pre-1917 and Soviet histories, the wars Russia fought, and ended with a guarded hope that “out of the ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ of the present ordeal will emerge, by some play of events the outlines of which cannot now be foreseen with precision, a Free Russia as part of a Free Europe.” The Russian Review, although not “committed to any partisan interpretation of Russian history or of the Russian Revolution,”^[24] was an ideologically colored publication, which was manifest, among other assertions, in its sharply drawn distinction between “Russians at home, who must still be inarticulate, and Russians abroad, who can express their feelings freely.”^[25] And since the journal was intended to be not specialized but “concerned with giving a broad panorama of the Russian scene, historical, political, economic, cultural,” the distinction looked logical and unavoidable. However, it was this theme of two “Russians” that led to complications in later years as the political scene started changing. This is how the transformation looks in retrospect, if traced through the editors’ addresses.
Dimitry von Mohrenschildt,^[26] editor from 1949 to 1973, was succeeded by Terence Emmons (1974-1982) whose “Editorial Note” referred readers to the “Cumulative Index to Volumes 1-30, 1941-1971” for the journal’s history, and treated the subject of “continuity and change” with an enviable reserve: “The Review will continue to provide a forum for work on Russian-American and Soviet-American relations.”^[27] This editorial note did not dwell on any other political issues.
The address of the next editor, Daniel Field (1983-1988), was not so concise and began with the directive that the journal should keep out of politics (“we must keep the present within our ambit”). It then proceeded to identify three groups of readers the journal should respond to: the American or general English-speaking readership “with a serious or professional interest in Russia;” the Russian diaspora, whose “creative energies” the journal “should respond to and reflect;” and “Russians in the Soviet Union,” because “a truly Russian review should enjoy the collaboration” of these Russians. What rationale prompted the editor to isolate “general English-speakers” into a separate group is unclear, but the division introduced a them-and-us motif into the Review’s self-image – “them” being Russians, of course, on both sides of the divide. As for the Cold War, the term did not appear but its context did: “The United States and the Soviet Union hold one another and the world under the constant threat of annihilation.”^[28]
For the first time a summary of the journal’s history was formulated in 1989 with another change of editorship by Allan Wildman (1989-1996).^[29] Perestroika was in the air, glasnost’ was the joy of the day. The Cold War was no more and the Soviet Union and the West could at last look forward to becoming one to pursue their mutual interests and initiatives. And, logically, it was at this point in its history that the Review decided to face the past and provided a short historical outline of its beginnings:

“The origins of the journal date to a time when Russian studies in America were in their infancy and the journal served primarily to mediate the achievements of distinguished émigré scholarship to an interested American readership still relatively unversed in Russian culture and history (albeit with the collaboration of a small handful of native American specialists…”

Next, Wildman quotes from von Mohrenschildt’s obituary article about Karpovich, “a good deal of the editorial work of The Review was accomplished by a three cornered correspondence between M. M. [Karpovich, the Harvard historian], W. H. Chamberlin and myself,” and then he adds: “and a good many of the articles and reviews were written by the selfsame troika.”^[30] Three points in this citation should be stressed. First is its treatment of time: “the origins of the journal date to a time..” sounds as if it is impossible to reach out to this period of time. Second, the distortion of the Review’s goals (“the journal served … to mediate the achievements of distinguished émigré scholarship”), which to boot contradicts its previous assertion that “a good many of the articles and reviews were written by the selfsame troika.”^[31] The third point is: since Wildman cites from von Mohrenschildt’s obituary article, he could not be unaware of Karpovich’s contribution to the journal.
The anniversary issue has two other pieces on the journal’s history. Von Mohrenschildt’s short memoir practically eliminates Karpovich’s role in the journal. Daniel Field’s historical record reads:

“In its first phase, the journal was a coterie enterprise. Its inception was stimulated by a wave of immigration by Russian émigré intellectuals, many of them refugees from Hitler’s Europe. The anti-Soviet napravlenie of the founders was stimulated by the onset of the cold war.”^[32]

…Rieber places the development of Russian studies in America squarely in the context of emigration from Russia and the first half of his article is devoted almost entirely to émigré historians. The material in the article is organized chronologically but the information is grouped in thematic clusters. The language of the article and the distribution of material in it, together with the examples he chooses in order to construct the field’s history, create an ambivalent picture both of the lives of émigré historians in America and their influence on the field. The abundance of material irrelevant for his subject makes it difficult to understand what the author wants to show or prove. The article is long and is replete with many generalizations. I shall concentrate on two particular paragraphs to illustrate the kind of conceptual problems Rieber’s method created.
In the twenties, he writes, there was in America a well-educated group of Russians, with several historians among them. However, most émigré historians led a hapless existence because “the lives of many were not settled, and the work they received at the beginning of their stay in the United States was either disadvantageous or temporary.”^[33] The statement’s validity is doubtful and its reference is unclear. It is placed between the names of such “outstanding personalities” as M. I. Rostovtsev, A. A. Vasiliev, Karpovich, M. T. Florinsky, etc. and the name of Valentin Riasanovsky, a specialist in Mongolian law and medieval history of Russia, who “was invited by several leading American universities but was forced to decline these invitations” since he did not know English. Rieber also notes that “Poor English was a serious obstacle for Vernadsky, who taught at Yale.”^[34]
Why is this information relevant to the study of Russian history in America? Each of the historians on Rieber’s list contributed to the field, some more than others, but they all participated in the process, including Vernadsky, whose allegedly “poor English” did not prevent him from publishing books, teaching, giving papers at conferences, and serving on committees “for the promotion of Slavonic studies” in America.^[35] Of course, some émigrés, whether historians or not, were frustrated in their efforts to adapt to a new country, but failure to obtain adequate employment was not necessarily connected to their being émigrés, given the conditions that prevailed in academia between the world wars.
Rieber states that “The émigré historians did not publish sufficiently in American scholarly journals in the United States and continued (sic!) to place their articles in the Russian émigré press in Europe.” Rieber mentions Rostovtsev as “an exception that proved the rule … but he was a specialist in ancient history…” However, as a coda to Rostovtsev’s “exceptionally lucky fate” in the United States, Rieber adds that Rostovtsev “was never happy” in that country. As for the scholarly journals, émigré historians’ articles appeared in such periodicals as The Journal of Modern History, The Review of Politics, and in others devoted to economics, political science, sociology, etc. – a fact that invalidates Rieber’s assertion.^[36]
Rieber’s next paragraph deals with several young emigrants who “received their education in the United States and joined American academe but occupied significant positions in it only after World War II. Anatole Mazour received his Ph.D. from Berkeley but had to teach at the University of Nevada for ten years before being invited to Stanford.” Georgii Lantzeff, who also got his Ph.D. from Berkeley, “had lived in the shadow of his teacher, Robert Kerner…”^[37] Kerner and Lantzeff are authors of important historical studies. Does this fact mean less for the development of the field than the irrelevant facts from their biographies? Why should the relevant information about them be relegated to footnotes?
At some point in the same section Rieber compares the study of Germany and Russia in the United States and the lot of German and Russian émigré historians: émigré historians from Germany who came to America after 1933 are referred to as “scholars” and the reasons for their emigration are explained. In contrast, there is not a word about the reasons that brought Russian émigrés to America: “In contrast to scholars from Germany, there were fewer émigrés from Russia, they got dispersed all over the country, lost their scholarly and social base, and led the life of second-rate scholars.”^[38]
Karpovich’s name comes up in the section, “Ideology and Interpretation,” devoted to the postwar period. Unlike other émigré historians, Karpovich is given credit for his role in the development of the field, but in a strange way. Informing his readers about the establishment of the centers for the study of Russian history at Columbia and Harvard Universities, Rieber writes that these two centers “were created and inspired by a remarkable group of scholars, mostly of American origin (the only exception was M. Karpovich).”^[39] Of other contexts with Karpovich’s name, two deserve mentioning: 1) “Karpovich was a truly tolerant person who did not strive to exert political pressure on his students, although through his personality (svoim lichnym primerom) he demonstrated a high level and standards of scholarly work, and a general antipathy to Bolshevism and the Soviet system;” 2) Karpovich’s “interest in the problems of intellectual history was significantly strengthened by Isaiah Berlin’s regular visits to Harvard.”^[40] Whence this striving to belittle Karpovich, especially since it was he who invited Berlin to Harvard.^[41] Why should it be stressed that Karpovich was an exception? Why are “a general antipathy to Bolshevism and the Soviet system” and “a high level and standards of scholarly work” placed in one sentence as if the former is expected to compromise the latter?
The development of Russian studies in the US after World War II was indeed stimulated by émigré historians and was significantly affected by many of them. Why does this fact appear to present a problem both for The Russian Review’s editors and Rieber? Why does Rieber prefer to paint a bleak picture of émigré historians’ lives instead of addressing their work? Why should Karpovich’s name be omitted or his role and contribution be misrepresented?^[42]
The ambivalent attitude to émigrés among specialists in the Russian field has had a long history. In a 1945 letter to the manager of the Translation Project, to which he served as an adviser, Karpovich wrote:

“Frankly speaking, I do not see how Russian birth and education (I presume that refers to pre-Revolutionary Russians) can affect the ability of the translator to deal objectively with controversial material. I can see that political opinion and sentiments might affect a research project where selection of data and interpretation are involved (even in this case, however, I shall not concede that Russian émigrés are necessarily more prejudiced than native born Americans) but in the case of translation work that cannot happen at all unless the translator is ready willfully to distort the text. You have known enough of Russian intellectuals to agree with me. …I confess that this is a sore point with me. I am greatly alarmed about the spreading of the idea that Russian émigrés cannot be trusted in scholarly and literary work having to do with contemporary Russia. That much has been hinted at, implied or openly stated on various occasions by President Day of Cornell,^[43] Bernard Pares, Cross and some others. I think that the sooner we get rid of this notion the better it will be for the progress of Russian studies in this country. I think it is a pity that we have not used to the full degree the knowledge and ability of many competent and in some cases even outstanding Russian émigrés scholars in this country.”^[44]

Is it not curious that history keeps repeating itself? Or is this another case of “negative continuity?” Another case of the absence of presence? If this is the case, then the question will have to suffice for the conclusion: what kind of presence?

* * *

Mikhail Mikhailovich Karpovich not only occupied a unique place both in the development of the field of Russian studies in America and in the cultural life of Russian emigration in the United States. He was also a unique human being. In the long run, his personality helped to create a tradition of scholarly non-ideological approach to the study of Russian history in America – “a space of freedom [in which] Russia’s own cultural tradition was able to grow in exile.”^[45] The following statement from Karpovich public lecture sums up his credo as a historian:

“There is no such thing as impartial history. Whenever it comes to interpretation, a historian has a certain starting point – call it whatever you wish – a point of view, a bias, a prejudice, a philosophy of hints, a frame of reference.
What can be demanded of a historian?
1) That he be aware of his point of view.
That he would not permit himself to distort the facts and to suppress the contrary evidence.
2) That he would frankly state his point of view.
Mine is that of a liberal.
Not a reactionary.
Not a revolutionary.”^[46]

* * *

Michael Karpovich’s archive was deposited in the Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library in two series, in 1988, and a few years later, by his son, Serge Karpovich. Series One contains seven boxes, mostly of private correspondence with such figures as Alexander Kerensky, Boris Nikolaevsky, Boris Bakhmeteff, Nikolai Vol’sky, Vladimir Nabokov, among many others; it also includes some manuscripts by Bakhmeteff and a few poems by Iurii Ivask and Vladimir Nabokov. Series Two contains thirty six boxes; in addition to letters, often from and to the same people, it has correspondence related to Karpovich’s work at Harvard, to his editorship of Novyi Zhurnal and The Russian Review, his involvement in the activities of such organizations as the Humanities Fund, East European Fund, the Chekhov Publishing House, Congress for Cultural Freedom, Fund for Intellectual Freedom and others. It also contains a fair number of manuscripts submitted to Novyi Zhurnal. Catalogued so far are the first three boxes of Series One and Box 1 of Series Two. Boxes 35 and 36 contain transcripts of Karpovich’s Course on Russian Intellectual History.
The documents published in this issue of Ab Imperio are located in Bakhmeteff Archive on Russian and East European History and Culture, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, referred in the text as “Bakhmeteff Archive.”
The author wishes to thank Tatiana Chebotareff, the curator of Bakhmeteff Archive on Russian and East European History and Culture at Columbia University, and Katia Shraga who have been of great help, as well as the entire staff of the archive for their support; my special gratitude is to Marc Raeff for his readiness to answer my questions about M. M. Karpovich, to Norman Pereira for sharing with me the materials related to Karpovich, to Serge Karpovich for kindly permitting the publications of the documents, and to Marina Mogilner for her interest in the subject and readiness to share with me her knowledge of it.