Author Tags: Doukhobors Politics


Articles: 1 Article for this author

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I met Ivan Avakumovic when I joined the University of British Columbia in 1971, and I was first a fellow member in the Department of History and after his retirement in 1992 a colleague, linked mainly by our both being Kingsmen. His character and outlook is perhaps best conveyed by his remark that "the only good pastry cooks are to be found in Vienna."; Although a fiercely loyal Serb, he personified for me the cosmopolitan gentleman of Middle Europe, always dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and dark tie. His father, when Yugoslavian envoy in Bucharest in the late 1930s, had gone, he proudly told me, shooting with King Carol. In 1941, he and his family were forced to flee, making a long hegira, via Cape Town, to England. There, like so many other refugees from the continent, he moved into English upper class life, attending Rugby before he went up to King's (1945). It was possibly his wartime experiences that explain his one foray into radicalism - his involvement in the Anarchist movement at the time it attracted government ire at the end of the war. Through the movement he became friends with George Woodcock with whom he co-authored a biography of Kropotkin.

Following his time at King's Ivan went on to gain his D. Phil at Oxford and began his career in academia with a post at Aberdeen. From there he migrated to University of Manitoba and finally to the University of British Columbia in 1963. Originally in the Political Science Department, he moved to History. By the time I arrived he had established a reputation as an excellent teacher of first year courses, a fully justified reputation as I discovered when I hid behind a pillar in his classroom and listened to him both lecturing and interacting with students, who were not abashed by his style. Some of his colleagues were not so taken by his manner, pronouncements and preferences. He certainly had a penchant for the visible manifestations of success and for the externals of power. He could be quick to take lasting offense if he believed himself to be slighted. However these traits were more than balanced by his devotion to the department's interests, his commitment to scholarship and his willingness to give support to the less stellar department members, for example securing for one of them a long withheld merit increase. After his retirement in 1992, he continued to visit the department, to give lectures for those of his colleagues who needed them and, as his mailbox attested, to carry on large correspondence with fellow academics.

The closing years of Ivan Avakumovic's life cannot be termed the happiest. He underwent a triple bypass heart operation but before long his doctor told him that it must to be repeated. "I don't want to do that,"; he told me. His condition meant that he could no longer visit his beloved Europe. His wife Solange became senile and had to move into a home. He was left alone in a large house, taking his meals in one of the restaurants in the university village. It became increasingly difficult for him to keep up his regular visits to the department where he was always interested in and willing to talk to the recently hired faculty. By the spring of this year it was clear that his end could not be long delayed.

He died on July 16, 2013.

by Roderick Barman
Roderick Barman