Richard G. Robbins Jr. - Overtaken by the Night: One Russian’s Journey through Peace, War, Revolution, and Terror

Research for this book was made possible by financial support from the University of New Mexico, a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board, and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. That generosity enabled me to travel to Russia and utilize the collections in libraries and archives there.

I am grateful to the staffs of the various archives where I worked: The Bakhmeteff Archive at Columbia University, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Manuscript Division of the Central State Theater Museum, the Manuscript Division of the Russian State Library, the Russian Military-Historical Archive, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, and the Hoover Institution Archives. Their skill and courtesy made my research pleasant and profitable.

My greatest intellectual debt is to the late Marc Raeff, who was both mentor and friend. By his teaching and exemplary scholarship he stimulated and sustained my interest in the institutions and officials of imperial Russia. His wise advice and generous support made possible my earlier scholarly efforts and his encouragement for this project helped push me to complete it.

Many academic colleagues, some no longer living, read portions of this book and made thoughtful suggestions on matters of style and substance: Abraham Ascher, Jonathan Daly, Gary Hamburg, Robert Kern, Semion Lyandres, Samuel Ramer, Jake Spidle, and Ferenc Szasz. They have my gratitude and thankful memory. I am also profoundly indebted to members of the Institute for Historical Studys Writers Group: Ann Harlow, Ellen Huppert, Joanne Lafler, Elizabeth Nakahara, Carol Sicherman, Autumn Stanley, Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada, and Louis Trager. Most of them read the entire manuscript and all asked innumerable questions and offered invaluable ideas for improvements. If this book is at all readable, it is in large part due to their efforts.

I owe a special and substantial debt to my Russian colleague Anastasia Dunaeva for her scholarship and generosity. Her excellent book onDzhunkovsky is frequently cited here, and she also shared material that had been denied me during my research in Russia. I am very grateful for her willingness to permit me to reproduce some of the pictures that appeared in her book. Thanks, too, to Koninklijke Brill Publishers for their permission to include material contained in two articles I wrote for the Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography: Was Vladimir Dzhunkovskii the Father of the Trust? A Quest for the Plausible, in volume 1 (2008) and Building Vladimir Dzhunkovskiis Memory Palace: The Curious Fate of His Archive and Memoir, in volume 4 (2008). I also wish to thank Peter Kracht, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Press and Jonathan Harris the editor of its Russian and East European Series for their enthusiastic support of this project and for their patience in answering my innumerable and often ill-informed questions. Pippa Letsky did a thorough and careful job of copyediting the text. I am grateful to Edward Kasinec, for his sage advice about pictures, and to Jonathan Lee, for scanning some of the images presented in this book.

My greatest debt is to my wife, Catherine, friend, colleague, and critic, whose affection has sustained me for so many years. No words can even begin to express my gratitude.