Gustave Alef died in Eugene January 3, 1996, of lung disease. He was 73. Alef was born on Independence Day 1922 in The Bronx, New York. He fought in Europe for the U. S. Army during World War Two. He married Joan Lerner in The Bronx on June 1, 1947. Their three sons, Allan, Peter and Eric, grew up in Eugene, and Joan resides now at 4095 Ferry St.

Alef's wartime experience inspired him to take up the serious study of European history. He completed his BA and MA degrees at Rutgers (where he worked with the noted Byzantinist Peter Charanis). He received his PhD from Princeton University (where he worked with Cyril Black and Joseph Strayer). He joined the History Department at the University of Oregon in 1956 and taught here until his retirement in 1987.

Before Alef came to Oregon, Russian studies were pursued by no more than two or three professors across campus. Alef worked to change that. Gus played a key role in bringing a whole generation of Russianists to Oregon, and helped create the Russian and East European Studies Committee which was eventually granted "Center" status in the Oregon State System of Higher Education. REESC will this fall have as members twenty-three UO professors in more than a dozen departments and professional schools. With Acquisitions Librarian Gene Barnes, Gus created a nearly unique exchange agreement with Soviet libraries. One of his most enduring legacies is a Russian-language collection which ranks among the nation's leading resources on Russian history and culture.

Alef quickly established himself as a specialist on early Russian history. Alef at Oregon, Oswald Backus at Kansas, and Michael Cherniavsky at Rochester, then Albany, were sometimes designated by a group acronym "the ABCs". These three young specialists on early Russia, along with Marc Szeftel (at Cornell, then Washington)were thought of as successors to the nearly singular father figure in American medieval Russian scholarship: George Vernadsky at Yale. Gus organized a seminar on medieval Russian history and made presentations at six of its meetings held in Europe, England, and the United States between 1968 and 1992. Gus' monograph, The Origins of Muscovite Autocracy: The Age of Ivan III (Berlin: 1986), and his collection of articles, Rulers in Fifteenth-century Muscovy (London: 1983) find their place on every serious bibliography of Russian history. Gus received fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation. He was a Guggenheim Fellow.

Gus liked to talk, and he wrote good letters. These letters revealed a Gus we all knew, but they also revealed a Gus none of us saw very often. He wrote from Moscow in December, 1968, when he was on the IREX research exchange program and was accompanied by family. "We have seen some superb performances of the Kirov ballet group from Leningrad and unforgettable Evgenii Onegin. The voices were matches, the direction was polished and the orchestra in the Bolshoi never performed as brilliantly as it did under the baton of Rostropovich. The Aida was better than good; but somehow the Bolshoi company excels in Russian opera.... We wrangled tickets for Plisetskaia's triumphal evening...." The next year, on March 26, he wrote, "Dog tired. Just returned from Pereiaslavl and Zagorsk; planning to leave again on Friday with Bob Crummey for Iaroslavl and Rostov. Spring, at last...." This was a familiar Gus, but his letters also sounded another note. "I have pretty much reached the end of energy's road...." [1968 December 17]. "This was dog's work and I am far from finished" [1969 March 17]. "Ozzie Backus's sudden death shook us up a bit [...] My work went well until mid-summer, when I became a bit stale" [1972 September 15]. "My own work has been painfully slowed..." [1972 November 18]. His work was painstaking; his work could also cause him pain.

Gus was the scholar who had been electrician. Gus came from people who knew how to work with their hands. Gus had a recognizable sense of what--in the workshop--is called "where the bones are buried." There aren't many like this among the professoriate. His electrician's hand gave many of us brighter homes. His and Joan's generous hospitality gave many of us brighter lives. Gus retired as Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika began to take hold in the Soviet Union. To many Russianists, perestroika was a stunning and total discombobulation. To Gus, it was pure delight. It would have been a pleasure to hear his reaction to the Russian election that looms this spring.

Alan Kimball
Professor
Department of History