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A Nest of Slavists at Nottingham in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

2015; Maney Publishing; Volume: 93; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.93.3.0525

2222-4327

Malcolm V. Jones,

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics

Slavonic and East European Review, 93, 3, 2015 MARGINALIA A Nest of Slavists at Nottingham in the First Half of the Twentieth Century MALCOLM V. JONES The University College, Nottingham, received its Royal Charter in 1948, thus becoming The University of Nottingham, and awarding its own degrees. There had been a lecturer in Russian since 1915 and a Department of Slavonic Languages since 1932, but until 1947, when Monica Partridge was appointed as tutorial assistant, it had only one permanent member of staff. Only one first degree is recorded before 1951,1 when there were five, and it was only during the early post-war years that it began to take on the contours of a modern university department with specialists in different fields, firstly under the headship of John Fennell (1952–57) and then of F. F. Seeley (1957–67).2 However, it would be a mistake to imagine that The University College made no significant contribution to the advance and promotion of Slavonic Studies during the interwar period and the years that immediately followed. Four names stand out. The first, and foremost, is undoubtedly that of Janko Lavrin, who assumed the post of lecturer in Russian in 1918 to be appointed Professor of Russian in 1921 and retire in 1952. I have written of his contribution to Slavonic and comparative studies at greater length elsewhere.3 Although his significance has in this century been generously Malcolm V. Jones is Emeritus Professor of Russian at the University of Nottingham. 1 Before the award of the Royal Charter in 1948, degree-level students at Nottingham sat for University of London degrees, whose Russian syllabus is described by Rebecca Beasley: ‘Reading Russian: Russian Studies and the Literary Canon’, in Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (eds), Russia in Britain 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, Oxford, 2013, pp. 162–87 (p. 179). 2 See Malcolm V. Jones, ‘Slavianskii mir’: The Story of Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham in the Twentieth Century, Ilkeston, 2009. 3 Ibid., pp. 21–45. MALCOLM V. JONES 526 acknowledged in Russia and Slovenia, he seems almost to have slipped beneath the radar in the country where he spent most of his life and to which he arguably contributed most. The others are less easy to spot. Apart from Lavrin, this brief article focuses mainly on Vivian de Sola Pinto, lecturer in the Extra-Mural Department from 1923 to 1926 and Professor of English from 1938 to 1961, Reginald Hewitt, his predecessor as Professor of English from 1925 to 1938, and Hugh Stewart, Principal of the University College from 1929 to 1934. Whereas Stewart died in 1934, Hewitt in 1948 and Pinto in 1969, Lavrin lived until 1986, continuing for many years to pursue his agenda and seeing some of his ambitions realized through the agency of Monica Partridge, who succeeded Seeley as head of department in 1967. Together, they illustrate some of the fascinating and highly individual ways in which Slavonic Studies in Britain developed during this period, on the basis of personal, often cross-disciplinary enthusiasms, a pattern that was replicated elsewhere when new Russian courses were established after the war. Their neglect may in part be explained by the fact that they developed independently of the ancient universities and the Liverpool/ London nexus that developed under the leadership of Sir Bernard Pares, and in part by their interdisciplinary reach, which frequently took them outside the mainstream of Slavonic Studies (in some cases more often than not) and led to their being regarded as comparativists rather than Slavists. A number of publications have in recent years charted Lavrin’s impact on the diffusion and study of the Slavonic cultures in Russia, Slovenia, Britain and beyond.4 His small books about the major Russian writers of the nineteenth century (Dostoevskii, Goncharov, Gogol´, Lermontov, 4 For a more detailed biography of Janko Lavrin, including fuller discussion of many of the issues raised here, see ibid., pp. 21–45. This book focuses on the development of what became the Department of Slavonic Languages/Studies at Nottingham and consequently mentions Hewitt, Pinto and Stewart only in passing. Where detailed references are provided there, I have not replicated them...