Nikita Struve, French literary critic and publisher, Died at 85

  Media, Writers

Nikita Alexeyevich Struve was born on February 16, 1931, in Paris and died on May 7, 2016.

He was a French author and translator of Russian parentage, specialising in Russian émigrés studies.

Nikita graduated from and tought Russian at the Sorbonne in the 1950s.

During 1963, he published a book dedicated to the history of the Church under the Soviet regime ( «Les chrétiens en URSS»).

His book caused a public outcry in France, it has been translated into 5 languages.

During 1979, Struve defended his doctoral dissertation on Osip Mandelstam (published in French, then – in the author’s translation in Russian).

At the same time, he served as a full professor at the University of Paris X (Nanterre), and later head of the Department of Slavic Studies,

Prior to that, he had headed the Russian section of the YMCA Press publisher, in 1978

During the year 1991, Struve opened the publishing house “Russian way” in Moscow.

Struve had translated into French the poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov, Afanasy Fet, Akhmatova and other Russian poets.

Nikita Struve wrote in 1996 the fundamental study “70 years of the Russian emigration”.

Struve was a member of the Board of Trustees of the St. Filaret Orthodox Christian Institute, Professor of the University of Paris-Nanterre, Chief editor of “Bulletin of Russian Christian Movement” magazine and «Le messager orthodoxe».

He was motivated as a researcher of the history of Russian culture was his private familiarity with Ivan Bunin, Alexei Remizov, Boris Zaitsev, Semyon Frank and Anna Akhmatova.

Maria Alexandrovna Struve was his wife (born 1925), the French-born daughter of Russian orthodox priest Alexander Eltchaninov.

The couple had a son Daniel Struve (born 1959).

Nikita Struve passed away at 85 yrs old.