Robert C Tucker

Soviet scholar, Robert C Tucker of Princeton University, died while I was in Lebanon.  I did not have a chance to say something about him.   I never met him but he was a big influence on me while I minored in Soviet Studies, here in the US and even in my MA time in Lebanon.  Soviet studies in the US was invaded by ideologues, very much like Middle East studies, but the at least Soviet studies ideologies, like Richard Pipes, knew Russian.  Tucker (like Jerry Hough and Stephen F Cohen--and the latter was a student of Tucker at Princeton) was a reasonable man with reasonable approaches to the study of the Soviet Union.  His approach to the study of Stalin was more psychological, so he did do the Homos Soveitecus stuff.   He did not blame Russian culture or literature for Stalin.  He also helped the incorporation of Marxist studies in the US academe when that was unacceptable.  His Marx-Engels reader is the most widely used book of readings by Marx for example.  He did not have, like many others of his generation, to blast Marx and Marxism before he begins his study of the subject.  I liked him and liked reading all his books.