Oleg Kobtzeff

Oleg Kobtzeff was solicited by the Cahiers du Monde Russe to review Gwenn Miller’s Kodiak Kreol: Communities of Empire in Early Russian America. Kobtzeff appeared on France24 at a rhythm of one interview every three days, in average, between December 4 and December 26 when he participated in an hour-length debate on the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union.

Dr. Oleg Kobtzeff is a historian and geographer. Besides AUP, he served on the faculty of the Sorbonne (Paris 1, his Alma Mater), the Collège de France, the University of Southern California, the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy and Parson's School of Design. His public appearances include US and French radio and TV, or institutions such as the universities of Cambridge and Maastricht and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

An American with family ties to many frontier regions of Russia, trained by founders of the French school of "New History", Kobtzeff summarizes his pluri-disciplinary and multi-faceted work as a study of the interface of civilizations. His familiarity with French, American and Slavic geographic research lead to his first assignments, for the French space agency (CNES), the U.S. National Parks Service and several scientific institutions in the Arctic regions of the Pacific where he lived for four years. There, he co-founded a museum, and became involved, as an educator or journalist, in the problems of multi-cultural societies, borderlands, and management of maritime resources, discovering how a remote area becomes a crossroads of global forces. He pursued his comparative research in Italy, Central and Eastern Europe, France and the European Arctic regions, producing publications and teaching on international competition or cooperation in fields ranging from war, the environment, or outer-space, to human rights and identity.

His public service record includes social work with refugees, serving on the board of a national monument in Paris and a long experience in conceiving and managing outdoors educational programs (involving cooperation with the ministries of sports and/or education of France and Belgium).

His publications include two monographs, nineteen academic articles, plus numerous journalistic pieces, photography and documentary artwork published by popular science magazines in the US and France.

Publisher and contributing editor of

The Kodiak Fisherman - 36-page local political and economic monthly newspaper (11x16 inches, 36 pages/issue; circulation: 4000; 27 issues published between 1987 and 1989).

Monographs

La Colonization russe en Amérique du Nord: 18 - 19 ème siècles (Russian Colonization in North-America, 18th-19th Centuries) Paris, University of Panthéon- Sorbonne, 1985, xxxvi + 585 pages + Illus. + Maps (favorably reviewed by Patricia-Ann Polansky, [Siberian bibliography ongoing project, University of Hawaii] see U. of H. at Manoa website). New revised and augmented edition in English in preparation for release in mid-2005.

Beginning Russian. Barron's, N.Y., 1996; also published in Finnish, Spanish and French edition—3^rd edition Initiation: russe—on Amazon.fr bestselling list for several months in 2003-2004, N°6 of all books on tape).

Articles

"From the shores of America to the shores of the Baltic: the extreme frontiers of Russia", in Russia, America and  France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"’Créoles’. From the Gulf of Mexico to Far North Pacific: the Surprising Migration of a Word", in Russia, America and  France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"How Russian Colonization Works: the Case of Russian America", in Russia, America and  France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"The Koniag: The Russian Heritage of a Native American People", in Russia, America and France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"The Russian Orthodox Church as a multi-national Church: the experience of Russian America", in Russia, America and  France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"Ivan-Innokentiiy Veniaminov and the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian and American Frontiers", in Russia, America and  France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"Emmigration and Historic Methodology: the Diasporas from Russia, in Paris and Other Places", in Russia, America and  France: Migration, Intercultural Relations , Overseas Territories, and Frontiers (forthcoming, 2005).

"Espaces et cultures du Bassin de la Néva ("Space and cultures of the Neva Basin : mythical representations and geopolitical situations", (Proceedings of the University of Nantes 300th anniversary conference and Nantes-St. Petersburg twinning ceremonies).

"Environmental Security and Civil Society", in- Gardner, Hall, ed., Central and South-central Europe in Transition, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000, pp. 219-296. Favorably reviewed in Marek Payerhin, "Transitions and Environment in Poland", An Annotated Bibliography for the Post-Secondary Curriculum Development Project prepared for the University of Michigan’s Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies (http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/crees/pdf/Payerhin1.pdf).

"Belgrade, Moscow and Washington in the War of Kosovo: Dispelling the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Myth", Scripta Politica et Economica, vol. XIX, N° 1, December 1999, pp. 2-5, 24-25.

"Au-delà de la Sibérie: l'Eglise Orthodoxe et les Indigènes de l'Alaska", in - Chichlo, Boris, ed., Sibérie II, Paris: Institut des Etudes Slaves, 1999, pp. 133-148.

"Holocauste en URSS: un héritage sanglant", Enquête sur l'Histoire, N° 22, Août-Sept., 1997, pp. 14-16.

"The Forgotten Religion: the Geopolitics of the Orthodox world", Scripta Politica et Economica, vol. XIII, N° 1, November 1996, pp. 10-11, 26.

"Dwindling democracy (The Russian presidential election)", Scripta Politica et Economica, vol. XII, N° 3, March 1996, pp. 7-9.

"L'Evêque et le chamane" (The Bishop and the Shaman), in - Charrin-Pochtar, Anne-Victoire, (Ed.), Les Sibériens, special issue N° 78 of Autrement, Paris, 1995, pp. 80-93.

"Les Chiffres du Goulag. Un révisionnisme rampant", Enquête sur l'Histoire, N° 9, Août-Sept., 1994, pp. 46-48.

"Map of Russian America in the 1800s", Alaska, October 1988, vol. 54, N° 10, pp. 20-21 (first map ever published, showing all Russian settlements from Siberia to California).

"Ruling Siberia: the imperial power, the Orthodox Church and the Native people", Siberica, British Siberian Studies Seminar, Cambridge, vol. II, 1984, pp. 6-15. (favorably reviewed by David Collins in Siberia (A Select, Annotated Bibliography of English Language Works Relating to Siberia and the Soviet Far East), Oxford, Denver, Santa Barbara: Clio Press, 1991.

"La Colonisation russe en Amérique du Nord : 18-19ème siècles", Boréales, N° 36-37, 1985, pp. 75-78.

Editing

Assistant editor, Gardner, Hall, (ed.), Central and South-central Europe in Transition, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000.

Member of board of editors for Boréales (pluri-disciplinary academic journal on Nordic studies), French Center for Nordic Studies.

Faculty adviser for Scripta Politica et Economica, student operated academic journal of the American University of Paris International Affairs Dept.

Miscellaneous

Book Reviews for Inter-Nord, Alaskan History

Consultant for William W. Fitzhugh and Aron Cromwell, Crossroads of Continents, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988

Journalism: approximately 50 free-lance assignments for various employers including NBC-News Anchorage, Alaska Magazine, and major American, French, and Russian periodicals, corporate publications and audio-visual media (complete list upon request).

Translations

From French and Russian into English: Script + interviews and dialogue, English version of Reflets de la danse: le Kirov (The Kirov ballet theater), French national TV channel TF1 production, nominated for Emmy award—best foreign documentary.

From French into English: Rupnik, Jacques: "In Search of Central Europe: Ten Years Later", in Gardner, Hall, (ed.), Central and South-central Europe in Transition, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000.

From English into French: Khodarkovsky, M., "Découverte, invasion, rencontre", in - Charrin-Pochtar, Anne-Victoire, ed., Les Sibériens, special issue N° 78 of Autrement, Paris, 1995, pp. 64-80.

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