Shulman, Marshall Darrow 1916-2007 (Marshall Shulman, Marshall D. Shulman)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 8, 1916, in Jersey City, NJ; died June 21, 2007, in Sherman, CT. Sovietologist, educator, administrator, diplomat, and author. Shulman is remembered as a leading scholar in the field of Soviet studies, though his specialty came to him indirectly. He was trained in government, economics, and literature; worked briefly as a journalist and public affairs representative; then went to war in 1942. After World War II it occurred to him, according to a New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin, that a major concern in future decades would be American relations with the Soviet Union. He went back to college with that in mind and earned a doctorate in Russian studies in 1959. Shulman taught at Harvard University, where he also served as the associate director of the Russian Research Center from 1954 to 1962, and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a specialized branch of Tufts University, from 1961 to 1967. Shulman returned to his alma mater in 1967 as the director of the Russian Institute at Columbia University, where he played a substantial role in securing the huge endowment that resulted in the renaming of the center as the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union. He directed the institute for almost twenty years, retiring in 1986. Behind the scenes, Shulman served as an unofficial Cold War diplomat, along with a team of other specialists and public figures from both sides of the Iron Curtain. The so-called "second-track diplomats" would meet in various countries on dozens of occasions, to discuss matters of mutual concern, most notably nuclear proliferation and the arms race. As early as 1966, however, Shulman foresaw an end to the debate and the threat. His lectures to the powerful Council on Foreign Relations were published as a book, Beyond the Cold War. His other writings include Stalin's Foreign Policy Reappraised (1963) and an edited work, East-West Tensions in the Third World (1986).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2007, p. B9.

New York Times, June 23, 2007, Douglas Martin, p. B10.

Washington Post, June 25, 2007, p. B6.