December 12, 2007

Thomas P. Whitney '37, 1917-2007

The New York Times today ran an obituary for Thomas P. Whitney ‘37, who died on December 2. He was 90.

One page from the ACRC archives

Whitney was best known in America as a translator of Solzhenitsyn, having translated smuggled copies of the dissident writer’s The First Circle and The Gulag Archipelago into English for Harper & Row. He was a history major at the College, then got a Masters in Russian history from Columbia in 1940. After a stint in the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime OSS which launched so many interesting post-war careers, Whitney was a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and then worked for the A.P. in Moscow until 1953, covering the final years of Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union.

Whitney’s continuing connection with the College merits an entire paragraph in the NYT obituary:

In 1991, Mr. Whitney endowed the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, to which he donated his vast library of Russian books, periodicals and other printed matter. (His collection includes manuscripts and correspondence by some of the most eminent literary figures to emerge from the Soviet Union, among them Ilya Ehrenburg, Vladimir Nabokov and Marina Tsvetayeva.) In 2001, he gave the college more than 400 pieces of late-19th- and 20th-century Russian art, including works by Alexander Rodchenko, Natalia Goncharova, Léon Bakst and Marc Chagall.

Today, the Center enjoys a space on the second floor of Webster Hall, at the east end of that building, in a spacious room overlooking the Holyoke Range (the same view as from the War Memorial.) Among many other holdings, it includes the original manuscripts of The First Circle which Whitney used in his translation. It’s a striking example of one alumnus of the College who saw his connection with Amherst as extending beyond four years of schooling, and brought back his own experiences and findings to add to what Amherst has to share.

The Times obit also offers an anecdote of Whitney’s association with Solzhenitsyn which references one of Whitney’s retirement pastimes, raising thoroughbred horses in Connecticut.

During the years Mr. Whitney was translating Mr. Solzhenitsyn, the two were never able to meet. They finally had the opportunity during the 18 years Mr. Solzhenitsyn lived in Vermont before he returned to Russia in 1994. On one occasion, Mr. Whitney took Mr. Solzhenitsyn to Saratoga Racetrack.

“He likes to be a very private person, and he was afraid he might be recognized,” Mr. Whitney told Thoroughbred Times in 1991.

Fortunately, Mr. Whitney added, “The only person who recognized him was a Skidmore professor.”

(I should add, in the interest of full disclosure, that the ACRC was one of the many things that motivated me to choose Amherst, shortly after its donation, and I created its original website in 1995. Another one of my reasons was the same view of the Holyoke range now visible from Webster.)

Parker Morse '96 | December 12, 2007 10:06 PM | Alumni