RF Christian

Professor of Russian at St Andrew’s University and world-leading Tolstoy scholar

He also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Senate Assessor on the University Court, and Convener of the Library Committee. He was a member of the UGC Arts Sub-committee, and his report on Russian studies in universities for the Atkinson Committee was published in 1979. For five years he was one of two British representatives on the International Committee of Slavists.

Reg continued to visit Russia until 1994, working in the principal libraries and at Tolstoy’s estate of Yasnaya Polyana. He travelled extensively within the former Soviet Union, including to Central Asia, and once shared a sleeper with Yuri Gagarin.

Over the years he visited close friends in Russia with whom he corresponded and exchanged books, including the stepson of the last tsar’s chauffeur (who took Rasputin’s body to Tsarskoe Selo for burial, and whom he also knew). For some, his determined book-smuggling adventures were their only hope of obtaining material from the west. Not in 1979, however, when, during a customs check at Moscow airport, a copy of Zinoviev’s satire, Yawning Heights, concealed under his trouser belt, slipped down the inside of his trouser leg and appeared on the floor! He was made to strip, his luggage was searched, and all that year’s offerings were confiscated.

Hisresearchinterestsranged from early manuscripts and printed books to Russian literature and the modern Russian language. His first book, Korolenko’s Siberia (1954), presented translations of VG Korolenko’s stories arising from his internal exile. Russian Syntax (1959, with FM Borras), a pioneering textbook partly based on the notes he had been obliged to compile for himself at Oxford, remained in print for more than 30 years. In 1962, Tolstoy’s War and Peace: A Study inaugurated a series of books and articles on the work and life of Tolstoy. Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction (1969) was followed by two-volume translations of his selected letters (1978) and diaries (1985), which gave non-russianspeaking readers new insights into the life and character of the great novelist as a man; the diaries reached a wide audience through popular paperback editions.

As Emeritus Professor, he published the first biography of Alexis Aladin who, having led the Labour Group in the first Russian Duma following the 1905 revolution, spent most of his remaining two decades in exile in England.

Reg balanced his academic activities with playing soccer for Queen’s and in the Lancashire Amateur League, and subsequently tennis and squash. A keen walker, at St Andrews he sometimes held departmental meetings at a brisk pace on the West Sands. Music was a lifelong passion; his mother had been an outstanding pianist (who, curiously enough, taught a member of the Russian royal family). In his teens he led his local church choir; as an adult he took up the violin, and regularly performed in concerts by the St Andrews University Orchestra.

In 1951 Reg met Rosalind Iris Napier, a Cambridge history graduate who had given up teaching down south for social work in Liverpool. They were married in 1952 at Jordans, the famous Quaker Meeting House in Buckinghamshire. Rosalind’s developing interest in vegetarianism would help to guide Reg towards a more Tolstoyan way of life. While he remained a proud Liverpudlian – and proud of his father’s Manx heritage – they came to love Scotland (both had Scottish grandparents). The family lived for over 20 years in St Andrews University’s last professorial house – the Roundel, overlooking the Cathedral ruins – and for 40 years had a holiday home in Perthshire.

Reg was kind, gentle, compassionate, modest and generous. A fellow airman declared that he was the only person he had met in the RAF who didn’t drink, smoke or swear. Over the years abstinence shaded into gentle moderation, but he kept his mildness of manner and language.

Almost to the end, he looked 15-20 years younger than he was and insisted on his daily walk. He always looked smart, his colour scheme rarely deviating from blues (especially Air Force) and greys, with an RAF or Queen’s tie. For more than a decade, as her sight deteriorated, he was Rosalind’s devoted carer. A carer who helped to look after him towards the end of his life said he was the nicest man she had ever known.

He is survived by his wife, daughter, son and grandson.