Peter Squire; Intelligence officer and academic who was hailed as the best non-native Russian speaker of his generation
Hyfler/Rosner
April 8, 2009
Peter Squire: intelligence officer, Russianist and Cambridge
don
Peter Squire served as an intelligence officer in the
British Military Mission to the Soviet Union during the war
and, in 1959, became a founding fellow of Churchill College,
Cambridge. He was said to be the fastest simultaneous
interpreter of Russian in this country. He was also an
accomplished historian, making a vital contribution to the
Cambridge Slavonic Department's identity as a centre of
Russian historical research. But it was as a linguist that
he excelled: good judges reckoned that he was the best
non-native Russian speaker of his generation.
Squire was born in Leicester in 1920, the eldest child of
Barbara and Alfred Morgan Squire, who retired early from his
family retail business and moved to Hampshire. He went to a
prep school in Bexhill, where he was subjected to a reign of
terror that haunted him for the rest of his life. Radley was
better, since he adored music and did well at classics; but
he was glad to go up to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1939
to read modern languages.
When war intervened he was commissioned into the
Intelligence Corps and sent by the dangerous sea route to
Archangel. His early work consisted of helping in the
disembarkation of munitions for the Red Army, whose officers
treated him with suspicion and hostility, but Squire charmed
ordinary people into talking to him despite the climate of
fear, which he detested. And, rejoicing in the language of
Pushkin, he was admired for his command of the argot of the
streets.
More spied upon than spying, Squire took elaborate
precautions to evade surveillance especially after moving to
Moscow in 1944. Hugh Lunghi, Churchill's interpreter,
recalls how, while assessing the latest military
intelligence, they would tap hard on their desks with
pencils in an attempt to drown the hidden microphones.
Squire once found himself in attendance at Churchill's
dacha, where he overheard one worried secretary say to
another: "The Prime Minister doesn't want any dinner. He
wants a large whisky and soda - quickly." He got it.
After the war Squire returned to Cambridge where he gained a
double first in Russian. Although acting briefly as a
government interpreter, he turned down offers of posts in
the Foreign Office in favour of an academic career. But his
PhD, a study of the secret police under Nicholas I, stemmed
directly from his horror of totalitarian society and it was
pursued with all the rigour of a former intelligence
officer. When published, as The Third Department (1968), its
contemporary significance was emphasised by the blue
binding, the colour of the KGB.
Squire's impeccable translation of The Memoirs of
Ivanov-Razumnik (1965), a sociologist who fell foul of
Stalin and suffered repeated imprisonments and
interrogations, was a direct assault on the Communist
colossus.
But as a Fellow of Churchill he focused more on his wide
cultural interests and his onerous teaching duties, though
he did find time to travel, sing, taste fine wines and
polish off The Times crossword.
He directed studies in modern and medieval languages for 26
years until his retirement in 1987, and was moral tutor for
postgraduate students for almost as long, a labour of love.
As a supervisor, he inspired his pupils with a fervent
desire to learn.
Immaculately dressed, he would quiz them with the unblinking
green eyes of a handsome cat. His red pen would dart across
Russian-language essays, issuing corrections, synonyms and
comments in tiny writing. He would make dramatic gestures
with his pipe.
In the words of an ex-student: "His bold eyebrows were so
mobile that they produced a kind of semaphore. It was pure
Feydeau, but one language supervision of Peter's was
equivalent to about four of some other lecturers."
In 1954 Squire married Nathalie (Natasha) Naoumova. Of White
Russian descent, she was brought up in Paris and also taught
languages at Cambridge. They shared liberal attitudes,
literary enthusiasms and Francophilia, talking French at
home.
Squire's wife survives him.
Peter Squire, intelligence officer, Russianist and Cambridge
don, was born on March 30, 1920. He died on February 3,
2009, aged 88