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Three typescripts by Galia Bodde: "Memories: My childhood and Youth in Russia, Siberia and Manchuria, 1900-1925" (1986); "A Russian Family in China under the Japanese: Letters from Peking by N. A. Speshnev, His Wife and Son, June 28, 1937-November 14, 1941" (1989); and "The Speshnevs Again in Russia: 90 Letters from Antonina Alexeyevna Speshneva, December 5, 1947-May 17, 1958" (1992).
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Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Galia Bodde Papers; Box and Folder; Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
102: Source of acquisition--John Hazard. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1990, 1993.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Processed 09/--/22
Collection-level record describing unprocessed material made public in summer 2018 as part of the Hidden Collections initiative.
07/06/2020 Biographical note was written by Tanya Chebotarev; added to the record by Katia Shraga
Galia Bodde (1900-2001), nee Speshneva (or Speshneff), was born in Russia and emigrated to China from Vladivostok with her family after the Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil war.
In 1935, she met Derk Bodde (1909-2003), an American sinologist, who was in Peking on a fellowship. They married soon after and lived in Peking where Galia worked at the Rockefeller China Medical Board's Peking Union Medical College. In 1937, Derk had been accepted to a PhD program at the University of Leiden. After getting his PhD, the Bodde family went to the United States and lived in Philadelphia where Professor Bodde taught at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1941, Galia's immediate family returned back to the U.S.S.R. and they have never seen each other again. Their letters from Russia constitute the third manuscript Galia Speshneff-Bodde deposited in the Bakhmeteff Archive. In 1969, Galia's nephew became an interpreter for the Soviets in their negotiations with the Chinese over Damansky (Zhenbao) Island in the Ussuri river.
In 1948, the Bodde family came back to Peking since Derk became the first recipient of the newly established Fulbright scholarship. They had one son, Theodor, who died in 1995. Galia Speshneff-Bodde passed away in 2001, Derk lived without her for two more years.
In 1950, Galia and Derek Bodde published an analysis on how Chinese culture inspired Leo Tolstoy. That work "Tolstoy and China" was published by Princeton University Press and was described by a reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Ernest J. Simmons, as "solid and important".
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| Name | ||
|---|---|---|
| Bodde, Derk, 1909-2003 | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |
| Place | ||
| China | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |