John Ernest Oliver Screen, 1939-2009

Abstract

SEER, Vol. 88,No. 3, July 20/0 John Ernest Oliver Screen, 1939-2009 In the hectic world of technological innovation, with the attendant curses of endless form-filling, meetings, targets to be set and achieved, which is now the lot of the academic librarian, itwould be hard to imagine anyone having the time, or reserves of energy, to pursue seri ous and sustained research in a non-related academic field. John Screen, who was librarian of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies between 1972 and 1998, was such a rarity. During his twenty-six years in charge of the SSEES library, he oversaw a programme ofmoderni zation and improvement that enhanced the library's international standing.In takingSSEES into itsfold in 1998-99,UCL acquired a world-class specialist library, thanks in no small part to the efforts of 526 JOHN ERNEST OLIVER SCREEN John Screen. John also forged a valuable network of professional con tactswithin the university world, and did much to foster the reputation of SSEES amongst those working in the area of Russia and Eastern Europe, most notably through his involvement with COSEELIS, the association of librarians in theUK specializing in Slavonic and Eastern European studies, and in his work with SCONUL. It was as the librarian that he will be most remembered by his colleagues past and present at SSEES and within the University of London; but John also earned another reputation as a scholar, and he earned that reputation where it mattered most ? in the country whose history he chose to study. John was one of a small group of British scholars who were drawn in the 1960s to the study of things Finnish. His own special area of interest was military history ? not the usual refighting of battles that stocks the shelves at booksellers, but what one might call the nuts and bolts of army life.As he openly admitted in a talk he gave in 2000 to a defence seminar in Finland, the Finnish army of the Russian period (1809-1917) with which he was primarily con cerned almost never fired a shot in anger, and was never of any importance. Almost single-handedly, John rescued it from obscurity and established itsplace in the Finnish heritage. In so doing, he earned the respect and admiration of a wide range of Finnish historians, from military specialists to those also working on the legacy of the Grand Duchy. His scholarly contribution and his active involvement in the Anglo-Finnish Society earned him the Order of theWhite Rose, First Class, awarded by the President of Finland in 1988. At Cambridge, where he read history at Peterhouse, John was a member of the OTC, and he served in the Territorial Army between 1959 and 1967. Lieutenant Screen, as he eventually became, was typi cally more interested in the practical organizational aspects of soldier ing: camp lifewas definitely not to his taste. Although the 1960s were largely taken up with learning the skills of librarianship and establishing a professional career, John nevertheless remained passionately devoted tomilitary history, and set out to acquire the skills necessary to tackle his chosen research subject, Finnish officers in the Imperial Russian army. This necessitated learning three new languages, Russian, Swedish and Finnish, as well as retaining a good reading knowledge of French and German. He was awarded his London PhD in 1976, and his researches on Finns serving in the Imperial Russian army and in Finland's own armed forces provided the substantial foundation for a series of publications, culminating in his book The Finnish Army 1881 igoi: Trainingthe RifleBattalions(Helsinki,1996). Although itwas his work on the nineteenth-century Finnish army that earned John the respect of his fellow-specialists, he also gained a wider reputation as a biographer of Finland's most famous soldier, JOHN ERNEST OLIVER SCREEN 527 Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. As a schoolboy, he had read the great man's memoirs, and this drew him to Finland ? an attrac tion further strengthened by marriage to Leena in 1970. His life of Mannerheim, which was published in 2001, offers a judicious, well balanced view of a man whose career was not without controversy. Some...