The Russian Area Studies Program salutes our decades-long benefactress and “comrade-in-arms,” Dr. Kathryn Wasserman Davis ‘28, who passed away on April 23, 2013 at the age of 106.

From its early inception (as the Soviet Studies Program) she generously supported our program, as well the Kathryn W. Davis professorship in Slavic Studies, established in 1975, currently held by Professor Kohl (Anthropology) and formerly by Professor Goldman (Economics). Her lifelong enthusiasm for all things Russian—dating back to her young adulthood, when she traveled through the Caucasus on horseback on an anthropological expedition—inspired her more than 30 trips to the Soviet Union and Russia over the course of her remarkably long and active life. While still in her twenties,  Kathryn Davis published The Soviets at Geneva: The USSR and the League of Nations, 1919-1933, based on her doctoral dissertation at the University of Geneva.