It is with great sadness that we note the passing of one of our Honorary Members, Lidija Dmitrievna Gromova-Opul'skaja, who passed away in Moscow 31 December 2003, in her seventy-ninth year.

 
Lidija (Lidia) Gromova was born in the Moscow area 21 May 1925.  At university she read 19th-century Russian literature, specialising in Tolstoy, Gertsen, Dostoevsky and Chekhov.  In 1949, at the age of 24, she was appointed a Senior Editor of the ongoing 90-volume Jubilee Edition of Tolstoy's works at Moscow's Khudozhestvennaja literatura publishing house.  She edited more than ten volumes of the series, writing extensive commentaries on the preparation of the texts as well as historical annotations on Tolstoy's works.

In 1953 she was placed in charge of the textology section of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Literature (Institut mirovoj literatury Rossijskoj Akademii nauk), where she worked until her retirement eventually becoming Head of the IWL's Russian Classical Literature division.  For the last decade of her life she served as Editor of the new 100-volume Russian Academy of Sciences edition of Tolstoy's works.

Dr Gromova has worked closely with the Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa since the SRG's founding in 1998 (her mutual co-operation with our university actually began in the early 1990s).  She has visited Ottawa on several occasions at our invitation, giving seminars and participating in conferences.  In February 1996, at a conference on Lev Tolstoy and the concept of brotherhood, she gave the keynote address entitled "The philosophy and ethics of brotherhood in Tolstoy's fiction" (Proceedings published under the same title by Legas, 1996).

Her work on Tolstoy also included his relationship to the Doukhobors, whom he helped emigrate to Canada in 1899.  In October 1999, at a conference designated The Doukhobor Centenary in Canada: a multi-discplinary perspective on their unity and diversity (sponsored jointly by the Slavic Research Group and the Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa), she spoke on "The Idea of 'universal brotherhood' and unity: Lev Tolstoy and Petr Verigin" -- published in the Proceedings (click here for details).  At the closing banquet on Parliament Hill Dr Gromova was honoured by the University of Ottawa with an official plaque bearing the inscription: Presented to Lidia D. Gromova in recognition of her outstanding scholarly contribution to our university, 24 October 1999.

Dr Gromova also collaborated with Dr Galina Galagan of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Russian Literature in St-Petersburg and SRG Director Dr Andrew Donskov on a remarkable book entitled Edinenie ljudej v tvorchestve L.N. Tolstogo / The Unity of people in Leo Tolstoy's works (Ottawa, Moscow and St-Petersburg, 2002), presenting for the first time in print examples of Tolstoy's draft variants of many of his works, including War and peace and Anna Karenina.

Dr Gromova will be sorely missed by all who had the privilege of knowing and working with her, but her memory will long live on in their hearts.