Russian at Dartmouth

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the Soviet Union also spurred greater interest in Russian studies at American colleges and universities. Dartmouth was no exception. Courses in Russian language and literature have been taught since 1918 at Dartmouth, where at one point it was reported that there were more undergraduates studying Russian than at any other one place in the United States. However, enrollment in Russian courses continued to decline until 1930, at which time Russian was removed from the curriculum. Russian was revived at Dartmouth College in 1942 when Professor Dimitri von Mohrenschildt joined the faculty.

Professor Dimitri von Mohrenschildt at Dartmouth in 1951.

In the fall of 1948 a Special Committee on Russian Studies was charged by President Dickey with systematically reviewing the place of Russian studies at Dartmouth College. As a result of the committee's proposals, Dartmouth inaugurated a Department of Russian Civilization in the fall of 1950 with a curriculum of 15 courses. Professor von Mohrenschildt became the department's first chairman; the newly created department made it possible for undergraduates to major in Russian. The following year, the program, which was unusual in its scope for an undergraduate college, received an initial $50,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation to develop the Russian program and to expand the Russian collection in Baker Library.

Faculty of Russian Civilization, Dartmouth College, 1952. Left to right: Rene Fuelop-Miller, Earl T. Sykes, Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, John C. Adams, Nadezhda T. Koroton, Lloyd Trevor, and John Washburn.

In 1960 Dartmouth began holding an annual summer Russian Language Institute through the National Defense Language Program; the institute continued through 1968. In 1963 the department became housed in the Humanities Division and changed its name to the Department of Russian Language and Literature. By the 1970s the number of full-time faculty members in the department had stabilized at 7, and has remained at that number ever since. The department has expanded its curriculum over the years with literature courses on individual writers, linguistics courses, film and theater, and other specialized courses based on student/faculty interest.

 

News service release, 1951, announcing Dartmouth's new Department of Russian Civilization.

Click on any image to enlarge.

A Dartmouth College Library exhibit, designed by Dennis Grady. Grateful acknowledgment to Kellen Haak, Kathleen O'Malley, Cynthia Gilliland (Hood Museum of Art), and Joshua Shaw (Rauner Special Collections Library). Bibliography and credits.