The late John White, a Soviet specialist and University of Hawaii history professor for 30 years, was one of the first scholars allowed to observe conditions in Russia during the Cold War. Soviet scholar broke
Cold War barrierJOHN WHITE / UH HISTORY PROFESSOR
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By Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com"It was not common at that time," Geoffrey White said of his father's 1960 trip. "Russia was not open to scholars."
His father spent six weeks in Nikita Khruschev's Russia, where he attended the 25th International Congress of Orientalists in Moscow and toured 16 cities and Russian Central Asia. On his return home, he reported that Russian citizens held friendly attitudes toward their American counterparts, but the American government, they thought, was "aggressive, a bunch of warmongers."
A UH professor emeritus and former department chair, White died Aug. 8 in Houston. He was 90.
White was fluent in Russian and Japanese and spent a year in Japan as a Rockefeller fellow, researching material for his 1964 book "The Diplomacy of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905."
He also wrote three other books, including "The Siberian Intervention" in 1950, a study of Russia's relations with China and Japan.
His study of Russia's relations with Asian countries was unique at the time, said Patricia Polansky, the Russian bibliographer at UH's Hamilton Library and a former student of White's. Polansky remembers him as a "terrific professor" whose lectures were always "chock full of information."
She said White was instrumental in starting a Russian Area Studies group on campus, which was popular in the 1970s. He even tried to get the East-West Center to develop a Russian program but was turned down by the State Department, Polansky said.
For two decades, Polansky said, White was the primary person building the library's Russian collection, and he had to fight for every addition. "I always felt that every single book on the shelf had his blood on it," she said. "My job was very easy because I just tried to build on what (he did)."
White served in the Pacific during World War II and graduated with a doctorate from Stanford University in 1948, the same year he joined the UH faculty.
After retiring in 1979, White moved to Houston, where he lived in a retirement home, Geoffrey White said.
He is survived by sons Geoffrey and Kenneth, three grandchildren and daughter-in-law Cary.
Memorial services are scheduled for Sept. 23 at 3:30 p.m. at Atherton Memorial Chapel on the campus of Central Union Church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Cancer Society or the John A. White Scholarship Fund at the Department of History, University of Hawaii.