History of Revolution: Russian language department at ANU

By Rosh Ireland

Russian was established at Canberra University College in the Department of Modern Languages and taught under the aegis of Melbourne University shortly after that institution, 50 years ago, became the first Australian university to teach the language.

Canberra University College was anything but an orthodox institution, and it appointed a political scientist, Harry Rigby, to take charge of Russian. There were three of us working there when I came out from temporary work in Moscow in 1959, the third being J.J. Gapanovich, an historian with a special interest in the Russian Far East.

From the outset, the department declared an interest in the contemporary Soviet Union, and an unofficial agreement with other Russian departments in Australia (by then Queensland University's course had been established) encouraged the ANU to concentrate its library acquisitions in the post-1917 era. The basis of a good library had been laid by Mr Rigby who bought widely in Moscow in the late 1950s, and the ANU's holdings compared very well with those of the British red-brick universities which took up Russian in the early 1960s.

Later, the Polish Millennium Library would be presented to the ANU to complement the Russian collection. As interest in post-Stalin Russia grew, the ANU, through the initiative of its scientists, made an exchange agreement with Moscow State University, an agreement which has operated ever since, apart from a short period in the 1980s when the Fraser government suspended cultural ties with the Soviet Union following the invasion of Afghanistan. The first scholar to go to Moscow was Daphne Gollan, the historian. Following her, most Russian lecturers and post-graduate students were able to spend periods up to 20 months in Moscow. The agreement was renegotiated in 1994 to take account of changed circumstances, but the new text still awaits ratification.

For a short period, beginners were taught Russian grammar by one of the world's leading Kremlinologists, Mr Rigby, until he reverted to being a specialist political scientist in the Institute. Grammarian, Margaret Travers, who came from Melbourne with the concomitant aim of flying light aircraft in Canberra, took over.

The Department of Modern Languages began to break up as professors of German and then Russian were appointed, causing a dizzy shift in the orientation of Russian, which under Professor de Bray became a department of Slavonic languages, then an ambitious first of its kind in Australia.

The new professor was preceded by a new secretary, Kate North, who, in a sense, outranked us all, having served in Moscow in Stalin's time. Robert Dessaix was a member of staff then, the only Russian graduate to complete an MA and a PhD in the department, before heading to the ABC via the University of New South Wales. To reinforce links with the Soviet Union, one staff post at that time was always filled by a lecturer seconded from Moscow, an arrangement which was ended by the Afghan War.

Until less than a decade ago, the ANU, with up to 50 staff members with interests in Soviet and East European studies, led Australia in the area, but its Russianists preferred to retain their attachments to disciplinary departments rather than found a named and dedicated centre.

Following the retirement of Professor de Bray, Russian was encouraged once again to emphasise modern Russian studies. The 1980s brought amalgamation and Russian returned, willingly enough, to a reconstituted Department of Modern, now European, Languages. The Chair evaporated, the Moscow visitor was not renewed, but three posts were retained with the appointment of Kevin Windle, a polyglot and dedicated language teacher from the University of Queensland via the BBC monitoring service.

The early 1990s brought, unexpectedly, a record of 50 people in Russian I, an outstanding generation which produced the first University medals won by European language students. With dismaying timing, as a struggling Yeltsin replaced an equally struggling but more personable Gorbachev, those encouraging numbers have fallen away, just as those lecturers who had weathered the cold war prepared to leave.

Russian is now reduced to a single Senior Lecturer with enthusiastic and capable part-time and voluntary support. A relatively exotic (and difficult) language will inevitably lead a precarious existence in a small arts faculty in a university in which less than 2 per cent of students take even one language unit.

The ANU has long had its commitment to Asian studies. European studies look to quicken under a new professor. One trusts that the ANU's window on the curious region which links them, Russia, will not be boarded up.

Rosh Ireland is a Visiting Fellow in Modern European Languages