Professor Lindsey Hughes (1949-2007)

Abstract

SEER, Vol. 83,No. 3, July 2007 Professor Lindsey Hughes (1949-2007) It is a great sadness to record the untimely death of Lindsey Hughes, one of the leading international specialists on the history of early modern Russia, Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London and, most recently, editor of the Slavonic and East European Review. She died after a long battle with cancer. Lindsey Audrey Jennifer Hughes was born on 4 May 1949 at Swanscombe inKent, to George James Hughes, a dental technician, and Audrey (n?e Bond), the daughter of a family of local butchers. She had a younger brother, Richard. In 1965 they lost their mother at a young age ? Lindsey would later dedicate her most important book to her mother's memory. She learned her first Russian as a pupil at Dartford Grammar School forGirls. To the end of her life she looked back with gratitude on her schooldays ? a few years ago she contri buted a chapter to the School's centenary volume, and more recently endowed a Sixth-Form prize forHistory. In 1967 she went to study Russian at Sussex University, the most exciting of the 'new universities' of the 1960s and a cradle of the 1968 student movement inBritain. From these undergraduate years Lindsey Hughes brought self-confidence and independence of thought, but no radical rejection of the established order. She gained a comprehensive grounding inRussian language and culture under the tuition of Beryl Williams, the late Sergei Hackel, and Robin Milner-Gulland who particularly encouraged her interest inRussian visual arts. Itwas here that she first came under the spell of Peter the Great. The course also gave her a first personal acquaintance with things Russian and Soviet, since students were required to spend a year inMoscow. Graduating with first-class honours in 1971, she went to Darwin College, Cambridge, to undertake doctoral research under the distinguished medievalist Nikolai Andreev: in 1977 she was awarded her PhD for a dissertation on 'Moscow Baroque architecture: a study of one aspect ofWesternization in late seventeenth-century Russia'. As part of her doctoral programme she spent another year inMoscow: here rigorous academic research was combined with appearances on Soviet TV, sing ing English songs with her guitar for children's language programmes. The years in Russia gave her an excellent command of the Russian language and an abiding fascination with and curiosity about Russia's life and people. LINDSEY HUGHES 561 562 LINDSEY HUGHES In 1974, aged 25, Lindsey Hughes was appointed Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at Queen's University, Belfast, under Marcus Wheeler. The Ulster Troubles were in full spate, but the university was a relatively safe place towork. She remained inBelfast until 1977,when she moved to a lecturership at the University of Reading: here she joinedJimDingley andMike Pursglove in the Department ofRussian, newly independent from theDepartment ofGerman which had previ ously hosted Russian studies. As in Belfast, Lindsey taught language, literature and history, developing the all-round interest and compe tence in Russia and its history and culture which have been the hallmark of her work, and also giving early proof of her organizational and administrative skills. However, her move toReading preceded by only two years the official Atkinson Report of 1979, which advocated the concentration of Russian Studies in fewer universities and the consequent closure of some departments. Reading was one of those affected; there followed difficult years while Russian was wound down. Lindsey was transferred to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), UniversityofLondon, in 1987, but continued towork part-time at Reading until the last Russian student graduated in 1989. By now she had established herself as a recognized and prolific specialist on Russia's seventeenth century, publishing her doctoral work in a series of articles on art and architecture and in 1984 producing her firstmonograph, Russia and the West: The Life ofA Seventeenth-Century Westernizer, Prince Vasilii VasiVevich Golitsyn(1643-1714) (Newtonville, MA). Golitsyn was both a major figure in the cultural evolution of late seventeenth-century Russian society, and a leading player in itspolitical and social life. For the next two decades these became the dominant themes...