HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

V. Setchkarev, Slavic Languages Professor, Dies at 84

Vsevolod Setchkarev, the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Emeritus, died Dec. 1 after a long struggle with brain cancer. He was 84.

Setchkarev, an authority on Russian fiction and poetry of the 19th century, was born in Kharkov, Russia, in 1914. He suffered from polio as a child, and, when he was 11, his family brought him to Germany in search of treatment. He remained there, earning advanced degrees in Slavic philology from the universities of Berlin and Bonn.

During World War II, he was employed as a translator of Slavic languages in Germany, and as a translator of English in Bavaria. He taught secondary school in Bavaria for a year before joining the faculty of the University of Bonn in 1947.

He became professor of Slavic languages at the University of Hamburg in 1953 and in 1956 came to Harvard, where he was appointed to a professorship in 1959 and to the Reisinger Professorship in 1963. He retired in June, 1984.

John Malmstad, the Samuel Hazzard Cross Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and chair of the Slavic Department, remembers Setchkarev as "a very lively teacher" whose courses in Russian literature attracted large enrollments.

Jurij Striedter, who received Setchkarev's vacated chair and held it until his own retirement in 1995, agreed that Setchkarev's abilities as a lecturer were exceptional.

"His English was flawless, and he never read from notes. He was able to demonstrate the philosophical, historical, and cultural aspects of the society through an analysis of the literature. At the same time, he was very thorough in his command of facts and also very clear, which made him particularly popular with undergraduates. He was also a highly appreciated scholar, both nationally and internationally," Striedter said.

Setchkarev published scholarly works in both German and English. They include: Geschichte der russischen Literature (1949 and 1962); Gundul'ic und sein poetisches Werk (1951); Gogol: Leben und Schaffen (1953); N. Leskov: Sein Leben und sein Werk (1959); Alexander Puschkin: Sein Leben und sein Werk (1963); Studies in the Life and Work of Innokentij Annenskij (1963); N.V. Gogol: His Life and His Work (1965), and Ivan Goncharov: His Life and his Works (1974). He also contributed regularly to Zeitschrift fur Slavische Philologie and other scholarly periodicals.

He leaves his wife, Margaret, and a daughter, Irene Bleiwas, of Randolph. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, at the Short, Williamson & Diamond Funeral Home at 52 Trapelo Road, Belmont.