Prince Paul Ivan Lieven (1875-1963) was born into one of Russia's leading aristocratic families. He worked briefly as an engineer before going to live on his estates in Livland Province. He was a senior Red Cross official during the Russo-Japanese War. In exile after 1917 he lived in Germany, Belgium, and Ireland. He was married to Nathalie, Baroness von Taube (1876-1964).
Karel Lisicky served in the Czechoslovak diplomatic service from its foundation in 1918 when Czechoslovakia gained her independence. He served in the Czechoslovak embassy in Paris, 1918-1926 and in Warsaw 1927-1931. From 1932 until 1936 he was part of the Czechoslovak delegation to the League of Nations. In 1936 he was appointed Counsellor of the Czechoslovak embassy in London. He remained in this position throughout the Munich crisis and World War Two, during which time Czechoslovakia was under German occupation and the Czechoslovak Government in exile was based in London. After the end of the war and the restoration of Czechoslovak independence Lisicky was posted to the Czechoslovak delegation to the United Nations where he was on a number of committees. Most notably he was chairman of the United Nations Palestine Commission which was set up to partion Palestine in 1948. Later in 1948 Lisicky resigned from the diplomatic service after the Communists took power in Czechoslovakia. He spent the remainder of his life in exile in Britain.
Olive Clare Lodge (1884-1953) was the niece of the physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge. Shortly after the World War One she worked in Serbia and Poland as an aid worker, working in Serbia for the British Food Commission. In the interwar period OL was able to travel widely in Serbia [then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes] and Bulgaria as a result of holding research fellowships from SSEES and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. During the Second World War she gave many lectures on Yugoslavia, raising funds for the Yugoslav Relief Society of which she was a committee member and after the war in 1952 she revisited the country. Lodge was the author of a number of publications on the life and customs of Bulgarian and Yugoslavian people particularly folklore rituals and also of several demographic studies of the areas.
Lev Sergeevich Loewenson (1885-1968) was born in Moscow of German Jewish parentage. He studied at the Universities of Moscow, St Petersburg and Berlin. When World War One broke out he was in Berlin and was conscripted into the German Army because of his father's German nationality. Loewenson served as a medical orderly and Russian interpreter before being taken prisoner by the Romanian Army. After the war and his release he decided not to return to Russia because of the revolution. He instead settled in Berlin where he taught history, first at a grammar school and later at Berlin University. The coming to power of the Nazis forced Loewenson to leave Germany for England in 1933, where he made his living teaching Russian and was often known as Leo rather than Lev Loewenson. In 1940 he was briefly imprisoned in an internment camp as a German citizen. SSEES, where Loewenson had previously given a series of public lectures on Russian history obtained his release in order that he could work as first a library assistant and from 1942, acting librarian. He also taught Russian at SSEES summer schools and gave some classes in Russian history. During World War Two Loewenson collected material for a Russian-English military dictionary, much of this material is contained in this collection. It was hoped that this dictionary would be published by the War Office but in the end it was decided that such a work was no longer needed. He remained at SSEES until his retirement in 1956. He wrote many bibliographical and historical articles including revising many articles dealing with Russian history in "Encyclopaedia Britannica". Some of the material in this collection relates to Loewenson's research on these topics including copies of manuscripts (the originals are held at the British Museum Library and Bodleian Library, Oxford).
George Luckyj and Jaroslav Rudnykj are both Canadian academics with Ukrainian family backgrounds. Luckyj is professor emeritus, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto. He is the author, translator and editor of more than 30 books on Ukrainian language and literature.
Dov Lungu was a postgraduate student at Queen Mary College, London, 1976.
George, Earl Macartney (1737-1806) was a British statesman and diplomat. He was envoy extraordinary at St Petersburg, Russia, 1764-1767, Chief secretary of Ireland 1768-1772, Governor of Madras 1781-1785 and most notably the first British ambassador to China 1792-1794. He wrote a number of memoirs of his travels.
Dr Bertha Malnick was Reader in Russian Studies at SSEES from 1946 to 1966.
Stuart Edward Mann (1905-1986) undertook postgraduate study at Bristol University before going to Albania in 1929 where he taught English at a boys' high school in Tirana. He went on to become a lector at the Masaryk University of Brno, Czechoslovakia. Mann became reader in Czech and Albanian languages at SSEES and literature in 1947 and stayed there until 1972. He published a number of works mainly on Albanian, Czech and Indo-European linguistics.
Jan Garrigue Masaryk (1886-1948), politician and diplomat, was the son of the first President of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. He was Czechoslovak Minister in London 1925-1938 and Foreign Minister in both the Czech émigré Government in London during World War Two and the first Czech post-war Government 1940-1948. He remained in his post after the Communist takeover in February 1948 but died soon afterwards in unclear circumstances as the result of a fall from the window of the Foreign Office.
William Kleesmann Matthews (1901-1958) was born in Narva, Estonia of an Estonian mother and an English father. The family came to live in Blackpool, Britain in 1914. After graduating from Manchester University, he gained a PhD from SSEES in 1926. His interests at that time were in Slavonic literature rather than linguistics. However since there were few suitable career opportunities for him in Britain at that time, Matthews went to live in Latvia where he worked as a lecturer in English at the State Institute of English, Riga and later at Latvia University. During this time he wrote several books, numerous articles on linguistic and literary subjects and also translated Latvian poetry.
After the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union in 1940, Matthews was evacuated as a British citizen via Moscow to Australia. He spent the rest of World War One in Brisbane serving as a military censor, interpreter and German teacher to the Australian and U.S. Armed Forces. During this time he also studied Australasian languages. He returned to Britain in June 1945 and was employed once more by SSEES. From 1946-1948 he was lecturer in Russian and in 1948 became Professor in Russian Literature and Language. In 1950 he was appointed head of the Department of Language and Literature and also editor of "The Slavonic and East European Review". In addition to publishing several books on linguistics, Matthews wrote many articles on linguistics and literature and translations of Latvian, Estonian and Slovenian poetry.
Ref: "Slavonic and East European Review" vol 37, no 88, 1958, pp 1-16
Professor William Richard Mead (1915-) was Professor of Geography at University College London 1966-1981. He is now Professor Emeritus. He was chairman of SSEES Council 1978-1980. He has had a life long interest in Scandinavian countries, Finland in particular. He has written an number of books on Finland and on other Scandinavian countries. He has been chairman of the Anglo-Finnish Society since 1966.
Baron Alexander Felixovich Meyendorff (1869-1964) was born in Russia, the son of a diplomat and Olga, Princess Gorchagov. After graduating in law from St Petersburg University and military service, in 1893 he joined the civil service. In 1907 he became member for Livonia in the Duma. He was vice president of the Duma for some time and in 1917 became a senator. He accepted an appointment as Russian ambassador to Britain but resigned after the policy supporting the Stockholm Conference was abandoned. In 1918 he left Russia for Latvia with his wife and in 1919 emigrated to Britain, From 1922 to 1934 Meyendorff was reader in Russian institutional politics at the London School of Economics. He wrote several books, his interests being land law, organisation of peasant communities and diplomatic history.
Ref: "Slavonic and East European Review" vol 42, no 99, 1964, pp 440-442
Michael I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was born in 1921, the only son of King Carol II of Romania. He reigned for two periods, as a child from 1927-1930 and from 1940-1947. He was forced to abdicate a few hours before a communist republic was declared in December 1947. Michael went into exile in London the following year and was stripped of his Romanian citizenship, which he only regained in 1997. On 31st January 1991, King Michael and Queen Anne made an official visit to SSEES where he gave a lecture.
Margaret Stevenson Miller (1896-?1979) obtained her first degree from Edinburgh University before going on to study at SSEES where in 1925 she became the first student to gain a PhD there. She went on to work as a lecturer in the Department of Commerce, University of Liverpool. During World War Two she worked as a research strategist in Soviet affairs firstly in Britain at the Foreign Office's Foreign Research and Press Service in Oxford and later at the Office of Strategic Studies in Washington. Whilst in Washington she also lectured on Soviet economics at George Washington University. After the war she continued her work at the Foreign Office for a brief period in the Economic Intelligence Department. She spent the remainder of her career as an administrative officer for the Central Electricity Authority and also broadcast, wrote and lectured on Soviet economics. Margaret Miller visited the Soviet Union a number of times and wrote several books on the Soviet economy.
The album in this collection depicts a British Miners' Delegation on a visit to the USSR hosted by Soviet miners that took place between August and Octber 1926. The delegation was led by the secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, A J Cook. The album was originally in the possession of H C Stevens, a translator who was part of the British Delegation. The timing of the visit is significant as 1926 was the year of the British General Strike in which miners played an important role. The General Strike itself began and ended in May but the miners began their strike in late April and did not return to work until November. Therefore this visit to the USSR was happening at a very crucial time in labour relations and one in which the issue of British trade union relations with the Soviet Union was very sensitive, particularly since there had been controversy relating to Soviet contributions to strike funds.
Prince Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890-1939), literary critic and historian was born in Russia. He served in the Russian army during World War One, and in Denikin's Volunteer Army during the civil war. He emigrated to Britain in 1920. He was lecturer in Russian literature at SSEES from 1922 to 1932. In 1932 Mirsky joined the British Communist Party and in 1932 he returned to Russia. He was arrested in 1937 and died in a labour camp in 1939. Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928), whose obituary is part of this collection was an expert on ancient religions, teacher of Russian at Cambridge and a friend of Mirskys'.
Ref: Mirsky, D S & ed. Smith, G S "The letters of D.S. Mirsky to P.P. Suvchinskii, 1922-1931" (Birmingham, 1995)
Bruce Mitchell was an undergraduate student at the University of East Anglia, 1991.
Lieutenant-General Sir James Wolfe Murray (1853-1919) took a commission in the Royal Artillery in 1872. He was the author of two handbooks on the Russian Army. He was promoted to Lieutenant-General in 1909. In 1912 he was an army representative on a British delegation to Russia set up by Parliament. He served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1914-1915.
Aleksei Semenovich Musin-Pushkin was Russian ambassador in London 1769-1778.
Gjenco Demetre Naçi (1907-1992) was born in Turkey to parents of Albanian descent. Albania was at that time still part of the Ottoman Empire. His family later moved to Greece and he grew up in Paxos and Corfu. There is little information in the collection on the events of his early adult life although it is clear that he qualified as a lawyer, moved to Albania and at some time in the early 1930s, married Jeanne Rogge-Vancappel (1911-c.1992), a Belgian. When Albania was invaded by Italy in April 1939, Naçi and his wife left the country. It was at this time that he became private secretary to King Zog (1896-1961). King Zog had became president in 1925 and king in 1928. Naçi and his wife probably fled the country along with the king, his family and other staff.
King Zog and his party, now including the Naçis stayed briefly in Greece and Turkey before making their way to France in August 1939. After the fall of France in June 1940, they settled in Britain. At first they made their home at the Ritz Hotel, London but in May 1941 Zog and his party moved to Sunningdale before settling at Parmoor, a country house near Henley-on Thames. The group totalling around forty, was comprised of King Zog, his wife Queen Geraldine, their young son Leka, other members of King Zog's family, Sohir Martini who served as court minister during this period of exile and staff members including Naçi and his wife.
In February 1946 the king, his family and most of his party left Britain to live in Egypt. He never returned to Albania, which became a communist state and was declared a republic. Naçi and his wife remained in Britain and settled in London. He probably made his living as a journalist and translator. In 1949 the Naçis' only child Alexander Leonidha Peter (1949-1995) was born. The following year Naçi took up a post as Albanian monitor for the BBC monitoring service, based at Reading and the family moved there. Naçi always retained an interest in Albanian affairs, particularly after his retirement when he wrote several unpublished books on the subject.
Alexander Naçi obtained a degree in modern languages from Queens College, Oxford and worked as a journalist and lecturer. In 1973 he changed his surname by deed poll to Nash. On his death, he bequeathed his estate to SSEES to enable the setting up of a Centre for Albanian Studies.
The National Book League was founded in 1944 and later became the National Book Council.
"Families, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial values: Britain and Russia" was a project headed by Professors R E Pahl and P R Thompson and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The project involved life story interviews of adults from two different generations of the same family in order to investigate the connection between family and cultural sources of entrepreneurial values and entrepreneurship. The British section of the project was never undertaken.
Predrag Palavestra, born 1930, head of the Department for Language and Literature, Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, the head of its Department for Language and Literature, member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, President of the Serbian Center of the International PEN and the member of the European Society of Culture.
Heinz Pannwitz (1911-?1981) (real name Paulsen) was born in Berlin. In 1940 he became criminal commissioner heading Department GII of the Prague Gestapo in German occupied Czechoslovakia. On 27 May 1942 an assassination attempt was made on the life of Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) which resulted in his death on 4 June. Heydrich was head of the Nazi security police and governor of Bohemia-Moravia. The assassins were intelligence agents sent by Czech military intelligence in exile in Britain, aided by the Special Operations Executive. Pannwitz was appointed head of a special commision to investigate the killing. His final report was submitted to Hitler and found its way to the archives of the Institute for Jewish Research, New York (YIVO). In 1959 Pannwitz wrote his account of the investigation found in this collection. He would have had to rely on his memory as few books had been published on the subject at that time.
K A Papmehl received his PhD from SSEES in 1965. He later went to work in Canada. This collection consists of Papmehl's writings on Matthew Guthrie (1732-1807). Guthrie was a Scottish physician who worked in Edinburgh and wrote on Russian ethnography, folklore and early history as well as on science and medicine.
Bernard Pares (1867-1949) visited Russia for the first time in 1898. On his return to Britain he began work as a university extension (adult education) lecturer at Liverpool University in 1902. It was at Liverpool in 1907 that he founded the first School of Russian Studies at a British university. Pares was a regular visitor to Russia in the pre First World War period. After the outbreak of World War One he was appointed British Military Observer to the Russian Army and remained at the front for most of 1915-1917. Pares returned to Russia in January 1919 with a commission from the British Government to give lectures in Siberia then held by the White Admiral Kolchak. After Kolchak's defeat he made his way back to Britain in October 1919. While the British Government awarded him a KBE, the new Soviet Government prevented him from returning to Russia until 1935.
Pares returned to his academic career, becoming Professor of Russian Languages, Literature and History at the School of Slavonic Studies (now SSEES) at Kings College in 1919, a post he held until 1939. He was also involved more generally in the development of the School and served as Director of SSEES 1922-1939. In 1922, with Robert Seton-Watson (qv.), professor of Central European history, Pares founded and edited "The Slavonic Review". During the Second World War, Pares along with Robert Seton-Watson, worked for the Government for a short time as Russian specialist for the Foreign Research and Press Service. He then worked for the Ministry of Information, touring Britain to give public talks about Russia, also giving lecture tours in the United States. Pares remained in the United States for the remainder of his life, he died in 1949. He married Margaret Ellis in 1901. They had five children but later separated.
G A Pavlovsky was a PhD student at SSEES in the 1920s.
Leon Petrazycki (1864-1931) was born in Witebsk, a province of Poland then under Russian rule. He studied at Kiev University and later undertook post graduate work in Berlin. From 1897 to 1931 he was Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Warsaw.
These materials were collected by the Research Department of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Some of the materials were obtained for the Department by staff at the British Embassy in Warsaw.
S W Pring (?-1954) was a translator of Russian literature and writings on music.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) is one of Russia's major writers and poets.
Frank Gann Redwood (1896-?) was born in Gillingham, Kent. During World War One he served first in the Royal Naval Air Service and then in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, being with the Danube Flotilla in 1919. He was transferred to the British High Commission in Hungary in 1920 and continued in the Foreign Service there until 1941 when he was evacuated via the Soviet Union. He returned to Hungary in 1945 with the Inter-Allied Control Commission, leaving in 1948.
Edmund W Richardson edited "The Picture Postcard", a magazine published in London 1900-1907.
Vivian Dering Vandeleur Robinson (in adult life he only used Vandeleur Robinson) (1902-1990) was the son of an army colonel and was briefly a military cadet himself before leaving to study history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was active during the inter war period within the League of Nations Union and possibly spent some time living in Czechoslovakia. He was the author of several books on the Balkans as well as a number of plays. He became a captain in the army during the Second World War and was probably involved in political intelligence work.
Margaret Tatiana Rose was awarded a PhD by the University of Hull in 1988.
William John Rose (1885-1968) was born in Manitoba, Canada. He studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University before returning to Canada to work as a lecturer. He returned to Europe once more shortly before the First World War and took up an appointment as secretary of the Student Christian Movement in Prague. He was on holiday in Polish Silesia when war broke out and he and his wife were civilian prisoners of the Austro-Hungarian authorities throughout the war. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Rose undertook a mission to the Western Allies on behalf of the Polish National Council of Teschen (Cieszyn). After a brief return to Canada, Rose returned to Poland to work for the YMCA 1920-1927. In 1927 he took up lecturing once more at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. In 1936 he became Reader in Polish History and Literature at SSEES. In 1938 he became a professor and from 1945 to 1947 was Director of SSEES. In 1950 he retired but remained very active, helping to set up a Department of Slavonic Studies at British Columbia University.
Ref: Stone, D "The Polish memoirs of William John Rose" (Toronto, 1975); "Slavonic and East European Review" vol 47, no 108, 1969, pp 8-10