Obituary

George Gibian, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Russian Literature, died at his Ithaca home Sunday, Oct. 24. He was 75.

Gibian, who taught at Cornell for 38 years, was still an active member of the faculty at the time of his death.

He was born in 1924 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, attending school there until 1939, when he was sent to study at St. Edmunds College in Hertsfordshire, England, ostensibly to avoid the threat of Nazi Germany. His family fled to the United States in 1940, and Gibian received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1943. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the 94th Infantry Division, which landed in Normandy in 1944, and he later served in the Battle of the Bulge as part of the Third Army under Gen. George Patton and received the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and "V" device for valor for his infantry service. After returning to the states, he attended the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and earned an M.A. in 1947. He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 1951 and went on to teach at Smith College until 1959 and at the University of California at Berkeley from 1959 to 1960.

Gibian joined the Department of Russian Literature at Cornell in 1961, specializing in Russian and comparative literature, nationalism and Slavic culture and national identity. He edited 20 books and published 90 articles and was a major translator of Russian dramatists of the absurd and also of the works of Jaroslav Seifert, the Czech Nobel Prize-winning poet. He wrote three books, Tolstoy and Shakespeare (1957); The Interval of Freedom: Soviet Literature During the Thaw, 1954 to 1957 (1960); and Russia's Lost Literature of the Absurd: A Literary Discovery (1971). In addition, he edited several Russian classics for the W.W. Norton series, among them these critical editions: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina and Gogol's Dead Souls.

He was chair of the Russian literature department from 1963 to 1973, acting chair from 1978 to 1982 and chair of the Committee on Soviet Studies from 1966 to 1969 and again from 1981 to 1982.

A frequent traveler to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Gibian wrote passionately on the subjects of nationalism and human rights in the national media. He received numerous awards, among them grants from the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Research Grant.

He is survived by his children from his marriage to the late Catherine Annis, sons Peter, Mark, Stephen and Gregory Gibian and daughter Lauren Mackenzie; his partner of 23 years, Karen Brazell, professor of Asian studies, and her two children; and 15 grandchildren. He also is survived by two brothers, Thomas and Paul Gibian.

At his request, no memorial service will be held. A graveside service was held Oct. 27. Memorial contributions may be made to the Nature Conservancy/Western New York Chapter, 315 Alexander St., Rochester, N.Y. 14604; or to the Finger Lakes Land Trust, 202 E. Court St., Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.