Ben Eklof (1946–2023)

Ben Eklof (1946–2023) Alexander M. Martin (bio), Colleen M. Moore, and Willard Sunderland On 31 October 2023, the following notice appeared on the Facebook page of the Center for Independent Social Research (Tsentr nezavisimykh sotsial´nykh issledovanii) in Irkutsk: Ben Eklof has died. … Eklof belonged to that generation of foreign historians for whom, already in the Soviet period, Russia was interesting not as an object for ideological judgment but as a world requiring investigation and understanding. In pursuit of this understanding, he worked in our archives and libraries, wrote books and articles about schooling in 19th- and 20th-century Russia; about the aims, successes, and failures of the great Russian reformers (Alexander II and Mikhail Gorbachev); about the world of the Russian peasantry; and about populism. He had friendships with Russian colleagues, initiated joint projects, worked at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and made himself a part of the development of historical scholarship and education in Russia. Today, we remember this past with gratitude, and experience reminds us that the humanities can only be humane when they are based on human connections and on professional cooperation across state borders. As this moving tribute from his Siberian colleagues suggests, Ben Eklof, who passed away on 24 October 2023 after a long battle with cancer, was a historian of exceptional intellectual breadth and human warmth, whose influence reverberated throughout the international scholarly community. Born on 5 September 1946 into a large family of Swedish and French-Canadian extraction, Eklof grew up on the southern coast of Cape Cod in the small town of Harwich, Massachusetts. Drawn to Russia by a youthful exposure to Russian literature and music, he graduated with a BA in history from Middlebury College in 1968 and then earned his [End Page 453] Click for larger view View full resolution Ben Eklof © Colleen M. Moore. Reproduced with permission. PhD in Russian history from Princeton University in 1977. From there, Eklof went on to enjoy a long and distinguished academic career in the History Department at Indiana University-Bloomington (IU), where he taught for 43 years until his retirement in the spring of 2020. During his long tenure at IU, he also served as co-director and then director of the university's Institute for the Study of Russian Education. Eklof won multiple prestigious academic fellowships, including three Fulbrights, two IREX grants, and a year-long position as a senior scholar at the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC. Later in his career, he was further recognized with an appointment as a senior researcher at the Poletaev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. A prolific and influential scholar, especially in his two areas of expertise—the history of education and of the peasantry in the late imperial era—Eklof authored or co-authored three monographs, edited and co-edited five volumes, directed the translation of the two-volume English edition of Boris Mironov's Social History of Russia, and published scores of research articles in major journals in the field.1 His dynamism [End Page 454] as a researcher continued even after his retirement, with his last article, a fascinating study of local governance and school life in late imperial Kazan, appearing in this journal in Winter 2023, less than a year prior to his death.2 In addition, he was a popular and award-winning teacher and mentor, who taught quite literally thousands of undergraduates in his regular Russian history survey and supervised the work of hundreds of MA and PhD students in graduate colloquia, including the foundational Introduction to the Professional Study of History and a seminar on the history of the Russian peasantry legendary for its comprehensive—and daunting—reading list. Eklof's contributions as a historian amount to more than just a tally of books, articles, and students. Both his scholarship and his teaching were driven by a passionate engagement with Russia and its people that had its origins in his first encounters with Soviet life as a graduate student in the 1970s and then ran like a red thread through his career, energizing his work and inspiring countless colleagues and students. The...

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