Lindsey Hughes; England's foremost authority on Russia in the age of Peter the Great
Hyfler/Rosner
Historian who became England's foremost authority on Russia
in the age of Peter the Great
The Independent
04 May 2007
Anthony Cross
Peter the Great, Lindsey Hughes recalled in her inaugural
lecture as Professor of Russian History at the School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, University College
London, had invaded her imagination from her first days as a
student at Sussex University, from which she graduated with
a first-class honours degree in 1971.
The shadow the 6ft 7in emperor cast on her life was resisted
for all of two decades as she decided to go to Cambridge to
research for a PhD under the supervision of the eminent
scholar Dr Nikolai Andreev on "Moscow Baroque Architecture:
a study of one aspect of Westernization in late 17th-century
Russia" (awarded in February 1977).
Ever the all-rounder, interested in all aspects of Russian
culture, and possessing a sound knowledge of the Russian
language, Hughes began her prolific publishing career with a
flurry of articles on 17th-century Russian art and
architecture and in 1984 published her first monograph,
Russia and the West: the life of a 17th-century westernizer,
Prince Vasily Vasil'evich Golitsyn (1643-1714). From
Golitsyn, it was but a short step to his lover, the Tsarevna
Sophia, who acted as regent from 1682 to 1689 during the
infancy of the joint tsars, Ivan V and Peter I.
Sophia, Regent of Russia (1657-1704), the first monograph in
any language to do justice to a much-maligned figure, duly
appeared in 1990 and the scene was set for a decade's
absorption with the great Peter himself that led to Hughes's
magnum opus, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998).
This was a work of meticulous scholarship and careful
(re-)examination of primary sources, written, as always,
with admirable clarity and precision, despite its 600-plus
pages. Hughes herself drew attention to her following in the
footsteps of Isabel de Madariaga's magisterial Russia in the
Age of Catherine the Great (1981) and she continued with her
Peter the Great: a biography (2002), which she termed her
"Little Peter", a highly readable and lively biography, to
match Madariaga's similar "Little Catherine".
Lindsey Audrey Jennifer Hughes was born in Swanscombe, Kent
in 1949; at the age of 16 she lost her mother (to whose
memory she was to dedicate her Petrine Russia). She had her
first taste of Russian during her schooldays at Dartford
Grammar School for Girls and went to Sussex to study under
the influential troika of the late Sergei Hackel, Robin
Milner-Gulland and Beryl Williams. It was at the age of 25
that her university teaching career began with her
appointment as Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at Queen's
University in a trouble-riven Belfast in 1974, but three
years later she moved to Reading, where she had ample
opportunity to reveal her versatility as a teacher, not only
of Russian history but also of literature and language, and
her considerable administrative and organisational skills.
Russian at Reading was, however, to become but one of the
unfortunate victims of the ill-considered Atkinson Report on
Russian Studies in Britain, but it led to Hughes's transfer
in 1987 to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
where over the next 20 years, her career and life were to
blossom luxuriantly.
She swiftly scaled the promotion ladder and her
professorship duly came in 1997, by which time her list of
publications was a yard long and her international
reputation well and truly established. She was the recipient
of several prestigious book prizes; she delivered papers on
a regular basis at conferences in America, Britain, Italy,
and Russia, and she delivered them with panache and a sense
of fun; she was the tireless editor of other people's
articles for the Slavonic Review and for collective volumes;
and she herself organised numerous seminars and conferences,
including for the last 20 years the annual meeting of the
International Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia,
whose members and gatherings held a particular place in her
affections.
Despite the long hours she spent in archives and at her
computer, scholarship was also fellowship and her manner was
always open and welcoming and the friendships she forged
enduring and deep. Lindsey Hughes loved scholarship, but she
loved and found time for many other things, including
singing with the St Paul's Knightsbridge Festival Choir,
visiting the Donmar, the joys of gardening, and her cats,
Tablet, Catherine and Sophie, mentioned proudly in the
prefaces to her books. Sophie, daughter of Catherine, who
died at a ripe old age just a month before her mistress, was
also credited in a hurriedly compiled local newspaper back
in 1999 with Hughes's professorship in Russian history.
Lindsey Hughes was also a passionate collector of "things
Russian", from spoons to samovars, from coins to engravings,
and her enormous collection was endlessly increased from
successful forays to markets and shops by her long-time
partner Jim Cutshall, whom she married in January 2006.
Cancer, from which her mother had died and the first onset
of which Lindsey had defied a decade earlier, returned at
the end of 2005 and for more than a year, with Cutshall's
devoted support, she battled the disease courageously. On 16
March she completed the manuscript of her study of the
Romanov dynasty; the following day, she had her final
relapse and entered the London Bridge Hospital, where she
died a week before her 58th birthday.
In order to write the commissioned Romanov book, she had put
aside, and thus never finished, the book on which she had
been working over the preceding two or three years, to be
entitled "Landmarks of Russian Culture", one of which,
inevitably, was to be the Bronze Horseman, Catherine the
Great's monument to Peter I; Lindsey Hughes, however, had
long since erected her own monument with the series of
studies that have ensured her standing as England's foremost
authority on 17th- and early 18th-century Russia.
Lindsey Audrey Jennifer Hughes, historian of Russia: born
Swanscombe, Kent 4 May 1949; Lecturer in Slavonic Studies,
Queen's University, Belfast 1974-77; Lecturer in Russian,
Reading University 1977-87; Lecturer in Russian History,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University
College London 1987-89, Senior Lecturer 1989-92, Reader
1992-97, Professor of Russian History 1997-2007; married
2006 Jim Cutshall; died London 26 April 2007.
Dr. Terry L. Bonner
> Professor Lindsey Hughes
> Historian who became England's foremost authority on Russia
> in the age of Peter the Great
>
That's the beauty of tenure. He must've been at least three hundred
years old.
--
Terry
_______________
"What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Hyfler/Rosner
"Dr. Terry L. Bonner" <terr...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8vadnQa1I-I7Nafb...@comcast.com...
> Hyfler/Rosner wrote:
>> Professor Lindsey Hughes
>> Historian who became England's foremost authority on
>> Russia in the age of Peter the Great
>>
>
> That's the beauty of tenure. He must've been at least
> three hundred years old.
>
She.
Dr. Terry L. Bonner
Rich Clancey
>Hyfler/Rosner wrote:
>> Professor Lindsey Hughes
>> Historian who became England's foremost authority on Russia
>> in the age of Peter the Great
>That's the beauty of tenure. He must've been at least three hundred
>years old.
It only seemed that way to people attending her lectures.
--
rich clancey r...@bahleevyoome.world.std.com
"Shun those who deny we have eyes in order to see, and instead say we
see because we happen to have eyes." -- Leibniz