Serge Elisséeff

Who was Serge Elisséeff?

Sergei Grigorievich Elisséeff was a Franco-Russian-American academic, an early Sinologist and Japanologist. He began studying Japanese at the University of Berlin, but he transferred to Tokyo Imperial University in 1912, making him the first Westerner to do so.

Elisséeff served in 1916 as Privat-Dozent at Petrograd Imperial University, and in 1917 as Professor in the Institute for the History of Foreign Affairs in Petrograd. Many years later, his émigrée memories of chaos and fear during the Russian Revolution were stirred by the effects of pernicious McCarthyism at Harvard.