Samuel Northrup Harper (April 9, 1882 – January 18, 1943) was an American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
and
Slavicist
Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was prim ...
. Son of
William Rainey Harper
William Rainey Harper (July 24, 1856 – January 10, 1906) was an American academic leader, an accomplished semiticist, and Baptist clergyman. Harper helped to establish both the University of Chicago and Bradley University and served as the fi ...
, Samuel N. Harper was an important figure for the establishment and continuation of
Russian studies
Russian studies is an interdisciplinary field crossing politics, history, culture, economics, and languages of Russia and its neighborhood, often grouped under Soviet and Communist studies. Russian studies should not be confused with the study of ...
at
The University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the be ...
.
Early life and education
Harper was born on April 9, 1882 in the
Morgan Park neighborhood of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, the eldest son of William Rainey Harper and Ella Paul Harper.
His early years were shaped by the founding of the University that would later house him as lecturer. His father became the University of Chicago's first President in 1891. In 1900, Wiliam Rainey visited Russia in the company of
Charles R. Crane
Charles Richard Crane (August 7, 1858 – February 15, 1939) was a wealthy American businessman, heir to a large industrial fortune and connoisseur of Arab culture, a noted Arabist. His widespread business interests gave him entree into domestic a ...
, a wealthy Chicago businessman particularly interested in Eastern Europe. Among others, William Rainey Harper met
tsar Nicholas II
Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Polan ...
and
Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
on this trip (the latter was disturbed that the President spent much of his time trying to secure funds for the University).
William Rainey Harper returned to Chicago determined to eventually start a program for the study of Russia and also to send his own son abroad to learn a new language. The same year, Samuel N. Harper worked as a guard at the
Paris Exposition while it was announced that he was to become the first American expert on Russia.
Harper received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1902. He received the Diploma from the School of Oriental Languages (Diplôme de l'
Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes) in Paris in 1905, studying under Paul Jean Marie Boyer, a known specialist in Russian language training.
Career
Samuel N. Harper spent the bulk of Russia's
pre-revolutionary years among the intelligentsia of
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
while funded by Charles Crane to teach Russian at the University of Chicago for half of the year, often collaborating on his studies with
Bernard Pares
Sir Bernard Pares KBE (1 March 1867 – 17 April 1949) was an English historian and diplomat. During the First World War, he was seconded to the Foreign Ministry in Petrograd, Russia, where he reported political events back to London, and work ...
. After his father's death, he was assisted by his mother Ella Paul in sorting and archiving his and his father's work – hence meticulous records of the founding of the University, the Russian program, and early 20th-century Russian materials remain in the University's archives.
Harper briefly attended
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
between 1909 and 1911. He fell short of finishing his PhD dissertation when Pares suggested for him to come to
University of Liverpool
, mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning
, established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...
to teach Russian while closer to the country itself. The arrangement was short-lived – it became clear that Pares and Harper found themselves on opposing political sides with regard to Russia, Harper later supporting the more moderate reforms of the
February Revolution
The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...
and Pares eventually becoming a public supporter of
Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
.
Harper abandoned the post in 1913.
He returned to teaching at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Professor on Russian Language and Institutions in 1914.
He briefly served as Special Assistant to the U.S. State Department, Russian Division from 1918 to 1922, and on the committee that concerned itself with the authenticity of the
Sisson Documents The Sisson Documents () are a set of 68 Russian-language documents obtained in 1918 by Edgar Sisson, the Petrograd representative of the United States Committee on Public Information. Published as ''The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy'', they purported ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harper, Samuel N.
1882 births
1943 deaths