Dimitri Sergius Von Mohrenschildt, 1902-2002

(sorry, can't find the site this came from. Highlighting is mine)

Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, a prominent Russian historian and former Hoover fellow, died on 9 June 2002 in India at the age of 100.

Born on 11 April 1902 in St. Petersburg, he was descended from a Swedish family that had settled in Russia generations earlier. His father, Sergei Aleksandrovich, had served as a marshal of nobility in Minsk province and was employed with the Nobel Oil Company. Dimitri received his early education in the Naval Cadet School. The Revolution of 1917 resulted in the nationalization of the Nobel interests, and Sergei Von Mohrenschildt decided the family would be safer in German-occupied Minsk. But with the Soviet occupation of that city after the German withdrawal, Dimitri and his father were soon arrested, and Dimitri spent nearly a year in Cheka prisons in Minsk and Smolensk. After he was finally released in late 1919, his parents arranged for him to travel to Poland as a hostage in exchange for someone valuable to the Bolsheviks.


To make ends meet, von Mohrenschildt worked as a merchant seaman until he was accepted at Yale University in 1922. Graduating in 1926, he returned to continue his studies there, receiving an M.A. in 1930, followed by a Ph.D. in 1936 from Columbia University. He taught Russian history as a visiting professor at Dartmouth College from 1942 to 1947, thereafter becoming a permanent member of the faculty.


In 1971 von Mohrenschildt published a compilation of materials on the Russian Revolution entitled The Russian Revolution of 1917: Contemporary Accounts. The following year he brought out his own Russia in the Intellectual Life of Eighteenth-Century France. But perhaps his most important contribution to the profession was the establishment and editorship of The Russian Review. From humble beginnings in his own apartment in 1941, von Mohrenschildt guided the journal to the prestigious position it now holds as the flagship of Russian studies in the West. He resigned his editorship only in 1973. In 1967, The Russian Review moved its editorial offices to the Hoover Institution, and von Mohrenschildt, having retired from Dartmouth, came with it, receiving an appointment as a senior research fellow.


Since the 1950s, von Mohrenschildt had had an interest in the teachings of Sri Aurobindo. Following his retirement from his editorial duties and the Hoover Institution, in 1976 von Mohrenschildt left for India, where he settled in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. There he remained professionally active, finishing and publishing his Toward a United States of Russia: Plans and Projects of Federal Reconstruction of Russia in the Nineteenth Century in 1981. In addition, he worked on his autobiography, which covered his early years in Russia, studies at Yale, and the founding of The Russian Review. But most of his time and efforts were directed toward translating the writings of Sri Aurobindo into Russian and their dissemination in the former Soviet Union. The correspondence in his archival collection reflects his influence in this direction.


Aside from his books and The Russian Review, von Mohrenschildt has left an archival legacy in the Hoover Archives: the twelve boxes of his collection contain a scrapbook of photographs, correspondence, drafts of various works, including chapters of his autobiography, and clippings and collected background materials for his writings and lectures.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo


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Seems there is a link between Sri Aurobindo and Theosophy

http://www.theosophical.org/publications/1530

"Were you the one who took a pot-shot at General Walker?", Dmitri's brother asked Ozzie when he saw a rifle in his closet, answering with his famous smirk.

They were really keeping an eye on Oswald, weren't they?  Like they were with the Boston Bombers.

For more on Sat Chit Ananda, the core book (brown pages) of "Be Here Now" does a nice job of explaining things, if you have right attitude.