This finding aid is made available for public use following the Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons designation.
This collection has no access restrictions.
Additional materials are expected.
2012-2013-M017: Source of acquisition--Lynn Visson. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--7/21/2012.
This collection is arranged in four series.
Boris Semenovich Rabbot was born on September 18, 1930 in the city of Kostroma, Russia, USSR and moved to Moscow at an early age. In 1948, Rabbot was admitted to Moscow State University's Department of Philosophy, where he studied until 1953. From 1954 to 1956 he was a graduate student at Moscow State University's Department of History of Western European Philosophy and Sociology. From 1958 to 1959 he worked as the managing editor of the journal V pomoshch' lektoru of the Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo Znanie (All-Union Knowledge Society) and, from 1959 to 1965, department head and traveling correspondent for the magazine Nauka i religiia (Science and Religion). From 1965 (official appointment 1967), he held the position of Executive Secretary and Chief Researcher of the Sector for Social Sciences of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, led by Academician Aleksei Rumiantsev. In the years 1969-1972, he served as Head of the Sector for Experimental Research of the recently founded Institute for Concrete Social Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (IKSI), led by Rumiantsev.
Following the anti-Soviet protests in Prague of 1968 and demonstrations of support for them—some from IKSI researchers, as documented in the archive—the Brezhnev regime cracked down on détente and IKSI was disbanded. Rabbot, whose 1970 post-doctoral dissertation raised controversy by dealing with the Soviet experiment from a sociological standpoint and was banned from defense, had to curtail his intellectual work and hence worked as senior scientific researcher at the N. I. Vavilov Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology.
In 1976, Rabbot gained legal entry to the United States as a Jewish refugee, having applied for his exit visa two years previously. Joined by his wife, he settled in New York City and, after a separation, got married for a second time, to Lynn Visson. Visson's father, a Russian émigré to France and then the United States, had been the director of exhibitions at the Wildenstein Galleries in New York (see Vladimir Visson Papers at the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian & East European Culture at Columbia University).
Upon immigrating to the United States (1976) Rabbot's activities changed to those of a freelance consultant, independent scholar and lecturer of Russian. He also worked on several unpublished manuscripts that straddled academics and politics, including a translation of his dissertation on the "Problems of the Experiment in Social Research" and popular analyses of Brezhnev-era Soviet politics and society. The most important of these were an unpublished manuscript on the private lives of the Politburo members and a series of lectures on the consequences of the American approach to détente. Rabbot's controversial position was that the Carter Administration's tactics of forcing the human rights issue by passing the Jackson-Vanick Amendment backfired by bringing hard-liners to the fore in the Politburo. Boris Rabbot died on February 3, 2011.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Boris Rabbot Papers; Box and Folder; Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Summer 2018: Collection-level record describing unprocessed material made public as part of the Hidden Collections initiative.
Papers processed 12/10/2018 by Katherine Tsan, Queens College, CUNY (under supervision of Katia Davidenko)
Finding aid written 12/10/2018 by Katherine Tsan, Queens College, (under supervision of Katia Davidenko)
August-December 2018: The collection was fully processed. Materials were rehoused into archival-quality folders and boxes. Original folders were preserved when possible. Some folders were discarded due to poor condition but metadata was preserved. Three folders were sent to conservation due to mold suspicion. Preservation photocopies of newspaper clippings were made. Brittle materials were placed in mylars and enclosures.
The bulk of the collection comprises Boris Rabbot's professional writings, documents and publications related to his academic work both in the Soviet Union and in the United States. There are also some personal documents, biographical materials, photographs, lectures and interviews.
Boris Rabbot served as a ghostwriter to Rumiantsev, authoring opinions on Soviet economic and political liberalization anonymously or in his supervisor's name; he also occasionally wrote speeches for Brezhnev. The collection contains several of these ghostwritten pieces.
Rabbot's writings in the United States include a number of texts about the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Politburo. Some of these were published as newspaper articles—most notably, "A Letter to Brezhnev," The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 6, 1977, which challenged the hardline course that Soviet leadership had taken—while others remain in the collection as unpublished manuscripts.
Reproductions may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
The series consists of Rabbot's professional and personal correspondence with various people and organizations and includes letters of recommendation and support. Correspondence includes various related materials, such as proposals and clippings.
(comprises correspondence with various organizations, including publishers, universities, magazines, etc. Organized in alphabetical order. Some correspondence with organizations is part of other series.)
(typed and handwritten letters, to and from the American Council of Learned Societies, B'Nai B'Rith, Centre d'Etudes de Politique Etrangere, Columbia University, Federation of American Scientists and the Ford Foundation. Also contains a list of addresses.)
(typed letters, to and from the German Mashall Fund of the United States, Harvard University, Houghton Mifflin, International Research and Exchanges Board, the Kennan Institute,
(letters of support and recommendations. Arranged chronologically)
(letter to Igor Birman; letters from George Fischer and unidentified (Colette)).
This series is arranged in three subseries: Subseries II.1: Professional Activity in the USSR, Subseries II.2: Professional Activity in USA and Subseries II.3: Post-Doctoral Dissertation "Problemy Eksperimenta v Sotsial'nom Razvitii." Comprises materials related to Rabbot's work in various organizations and his independent scholarly projects, his published and unpublished works, including articles, monographs, talks. Also included are notes, drafts, documents, interviews, and various publications.
Includes materials related to Rabbot's work at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Contains his published and unpublished writings, reports, subject files, internal documents of the Academy of Sciences, and reference materials. Also contains publications that document the birth and development of the field of sociology in the Soviet Union. Rabbot's post-doctoral dissertation is a separate subseries (Subseries II.3: Post-Doctoral Dissertation "Problemy Eksperimenta v Sotsial'nom Issledovanii").
(reports and papers that Rabbot wrote for Rumiantsev as well as various reports and articles by other authors that Rabbot kept for his work, including the Academy of Sciences' internal publications and documents)
(work that Rabbot did during his tenure as Aleksei Rumiantsev's Personal Secretary at the Academy of Sciences. The manuscripts signed with Rumiantsev's name were actually ghostwritten by Rabbot)
(observations from 1968 trip to U.S. universities)
(reports, reference materials and notes prepared for Rumiantsev)
(regarding the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia)
(history, social and political sciences, education, philosophy, economics, agriculture, semiotics and linguistics)
(documents, notes and reference materials on various subjects)
(about the writings of Gefter, Grunt, Drabkin, Kremer and others accused of being anti-Marxist)
(regarding Nekrich's work "1941. 22 iiunia")
(typescript copy of Tvardovskii's letter to Brezhnev regarding Tvardovskii's poem "Po pravu pamiati")
(arranged in chronological order)
(various publications on sociology, economics, politics and propaganda, including reports, extended abstracts of dissertations and speeches, articles, etc. Most publications are internal to IKSI, the Institute for Concrete Social Studies. Arranged chronologically)
(arranged alphabetically. Rabbot's articles published in
Includes Rabbot's published articles in the United States; manuscripts mostly related to his unpublished book on the Politburo called Upstairs in Moscow; drafts and notes; materials pertaining to Rabbot's teaching and consulting activity, including his talks, lectures, and seminars. Also contains interviews, correspondence regarding employment opportunities and some professional letters related to various projects.
(Rabbot's published newspaper articles with related materials. Arranged in alphabetical order)
(original article published in
(original publication, drafts, related correspondence. This article, which Rabbot has been primarily known for in the United States, was translated into English by Lynn Visson (pseud. Michel Petrov) and published in
(original article published in the
(report for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, with related correspondence)
(Rabbot's writings on the USSR elite, mostly chapters for his future books)
(translated into English by Lynn Visson (pseud. Michel Petrov); includes unnumbered draft pages)
(typescripts in Russian and in English, with related correspondence)
(original folder had the inscription: "pp. 16-23 Andropov's house; pp. 26-28 Rumiantsev apartment." Includes letter from publisher, Harper & Row, dated 1978. Original folder was disposed due to its condition)
(two typescripts designated as material for a future book)
(handwritten notes in Russian; typescript in English)
(two manuscripts in English with related correspondence)
(book proposal and drafts of bibliography)
(IN CONSERVATION)
(English typescript, drafts in Russian)
(original folder had the inscription: "p. 64 the story of Rabbot's movie premiere, p. 4 Rumiantsev in a movie, p.7 Rumiantsev's speech, pp. 13-14 Taganka, pp. 48-49 meeting w. Tikhonov". Original folder was disposed due to its condition)
(typescript versions, notes, drafts)
(typescript of the article with related correspondence)
(typescripts with handwritten notes)
(typescripts in English, notes in Russian)
(typescript in English; Russian version titled "Pochemu ne Lenin, a Mao Dze-Dun?")
(book proposal, chapter outline, biography note, notes in Russian)
(notes and drafts in Russian and English for various Rabbot's writings. Mostly drafts and notes for future books and books in progress on Soviet leadership)
(in Russian and English. Subjects and figures discussed: Brezhnev, Kirilenko, Kosygin's views on the reunification of Germany)
(drafts, correspondence and reference materials)
(includes announcements and invitations, with some accompanying correspondence and biographical info)
(oversize poster stored in oversize flat box)
(interviewed by Harriet Leibowitz, Linda Lubrano, and Nina Toren)
Rabbot wrote his post-doctoral dissertation in the Soviet Union in 1969-1970. It was published by the Academy of Sciences in 1970 before being banned. In the United States he translated the work into English in preparation for a book publication, but it was never published. The files contain typescripts in Russian and English with holograph notes in Russian.
(offset publication of the Academy of Sciences)
(contains the English translation of Rabbot's post-doctoral dissertation; drafts, and materials related to a future book based on the dissertation)
(materials related to the unpublished book based on the dissertation, such as the book proposal, drafts and notes)
This series comprises Boris Rabbot's personal documents and biographical materials, including certificates, IDs, immigration papers, travel documents, passports, CVs, financial and legal documents. There is also a memorial volume published after Rabbot's death that serves as an important source of biographical information for the researcher: Visson, L. and Arkanov, V. Boris Rabbot: An Unheeded Voice of the 1960s. Moscow: R. Valent, 2012.
(U.S. passport, birth, marriage and citizenship certificates)
(book about Boris Rabbot compiled by Lynn Visson and Vasilii Arkanov published in Moscow in 2012)
This series contains copies of Rabbot's individual and group photographs with family and friends.