Alexander Kazhdan

Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (, ; 3 September 1922 – 29 May 1997) was a Soviet and American Byzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volume Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, a comprehensive encyclopedic work containing more than 5,000 entries.

Biography Born into the affluent Jewish family of the leather and chemical industrialist Pyotr Israilevich Kazhdan (born Peisakh Efros) and Anna ( Frumson), Kazhdan was raised in Moscow by his maternal grandmother Tamara Frumson, a member of the Rostov-on-Don Jewish elite from the Tsarist era. While attending school in 1934–35, he published poems in the children's magazine Pionerskaya Pravda.

Kazhdan studied history at Moscow State University from 1939. In December 1941, as the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union threatened Moscow, he was rejected from service in the Red Army due to his extreme short-sightedness and evacuated to Ufa, where he graduated from the in 1942. From 1943, he pursued doctoral studies as an aspirant at Moscow State University and then with Eugene Kosminsky, a historian of medieval England, at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.

The anti-cosmopolitan campaign launched in the Soviet Union in late 1946 is said to have prevented Kazhdan's career at the Academy of Sciences. Kazhdan was told he would not be allowed return travel to see his family in the United States, and censorship of his work by his superiors in the Soviet academic establishment increased. In October 1978 Kazhdan and his wife departed from the Soviet Union, having received a visa for immigration to Israel. Kazhdan lectured briefly at the University of Vienna, the Collège de France and the University of Birmingham before moving on to the United States.

Kazhdan's publications were removed from circulation after his emigration to the United States. His Russian students include , Sergey Ivanov, and .

United States Kazhdan's first major publications in English were collaborative: People and Power in Byzantium (1982), a broad ranging study of Byzantine society, was written with Giles Constable; Studies in Byzantine literature (1984) with Simon Franklin; and Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (1985) with Ann Wharton Epstein. His greatest English-language project was likewise a massive collaborative effort: the three-volume Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991), edited by Kazhdan, was the first reference work of the sort ever to be published, and remains an indispensable point of departure for all areas of Byzantine studies. He wrote approximately 20%, or about 1,000, of the entries himself.

As Kazhdan became more comfortable with English, his pace of publication once again matched that of his Russian years. His later scholarship is above all marked with a growing concern with Byzantine literature, particularly hagiography. In his later texts, he proposed to seek the origins of Russian and Eastern European totalitarianism in Byzantium.

Kazhdan died in Washington, D.C., in 1997. His death cut short his work on a monumental History of Byzantine Literature; however, the first volume of this work (covering the period from 650 to 850) was published in 1999, and the second (for the period from 850 to 1000) followed in 2006.

Main publications Books Аграрные отношения в Византии XIII–XIV в., Moskva: Akademiya Nauk SSSR, 1952. Религия и атеизм в древнем мире, Moskva: Akademiya Nauk SSSR, 1957. Деревня и город в Византии IХ–Х вв. Очерки по истории византийского феодализма, Moskva: Akademiya Nauk SSSR, 1960. Византийская культура (X–XII вв.), Moskva: Nauka, 1968 (reissued and expanded: Moskva: Aleteyya, 2006). Социальный состав господствующего класса Византии в XI–XII вв., Moskva: Nauka, 1974. People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies (with Giles Constable), Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982. Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (with Simon Franklin; Past and Present Publications), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984,. Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (with Ann Wharton Epstein), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (ed.), 3 vols., New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. L'aristocrazia bizantina dal principio dell'XI alla fine del XII secolo (with Silvia Ronchey), Palermo: Sellerio, 1997, A History of Byzantine Literature (vol. I with Lee E. Sherry and Christine Angelidi, vol. II ed. Christine Angelidi), 2 vols., Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 1999–2006 (vol. I, vol. II).

Articles and book chapters "Византийское сельское поселение", Византийский временник 27 (1949), pp. 215–244. "Крестьянские движения в Византии в X в. и аграрная политика императоров Македонской династии", Византийский временник 30 (1952), pp. 73–98. "О некоторых спорных вопросах истории становления феодальных отношений в Римской империи", Вестник древней истории 45 (1953), pp. 77–106. "Византийские города в VII–XI веках", Советская археология 21 (1954), pp. 164–88. "Формирование феодального поместья в Византии X в.", Византийский временник 36 (1956), pp. 98–122. "Экскуссия и экскуссаты в Византии X–XII вв.", in Византийские очерки, ed. M. Tikhomirov, Moskva: Akademiya Nauk SSSR, 1961, pp. 186–216. "Отношения Древней Руси и Византии в XI – первой половине XIII в." (with and Z.V. Udaltsova), in Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 5–10 September 1966), ed. J.M. Hussey, D. Obolensky, S. Runciman, London: Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. 69–91. "Из экономической жизни Византии XI–XII вв. Натуральное и денежное хозяйство", in Византийские очерки. Труды советских ученых к XIV конгрессу византинистов, ed. Z.V. Udaltsova and A.P. Kazhdan, Мoskva: Nauka, 1971, pp. 169–212. "L'Histoire de Cantacuzène en tant qu'oeuvre littéraire", Byzantion 50 (1980), pp. 279–335. "Continuity and Discontinuity in Byzantine History" (with Anthony Cutler), Byzantion 52 (1982), pp. 429–78. "The Armenians in the Byzantine Ruling Class, Predominantly in the Ninth through Twelfth Centuries", in Medieval Armenian Culture, ed. T.J. Samuelian and M.E. Stone, Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984, pp. 439–451. "Do We Need a New History of Byzantine Law?", 39 (1989), pp. 1–28. "State, Feudal, and Private Economy in Byzantium", Dumbarton Oaks Papers 47 (1993), pp. 83–100. "Pronoia: The History of a Scholarly Discussion", Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995), pp. 133–163. "The Peasantry", in The Byzantines, ed. G. Cavallo, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 43–73. "Polis and kastron in Theophanes and in Some Other Historical Texts", in Ευψυχία. Mélanges offerts à Hélène Ahrweiler, ed. M. Balard et al., Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998, vol. II, pp. 345–360.