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Robert C. Tucker, 92, dies; scholar of Soviet-era politics and history

Robert C. Tucker, 92, whose early State Department assignment in Moscow launched a distinguished career as a scholar of Soviet-era politics and history, notably tracing the enduring impact of Joseph Stalin's reign, died July 29 at his home in Princeton, N.J. He had pneumonia.

His death was confirmed by Princeton University, where he was a professor of politics from 1962 to 1984 and the founding director of the university's Russian studies program.

Blair A. Ruble, who directs the Washington-based Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, said that before Soviet archives opened after the collapse of the Communist system in 1991, Dr. Tucker was for decades one of a "very small number of scholars who were able to give an all-encompassing view of the Soviet system."

Virtually no other American-born Sovietologist of Dr. Tucker's generation combined high-level scholarship with his depth of experience living under Stalin's rule, Ruble said....
Read entire article at WaPo