Sir Bernard Pares
Pares inRussia duringWorld War I
Born	(1867-03-01)1 March 1867 Albury, Surrey,England
Died	17 April 1949(1949-04-17) (aged 82) New York City, US
Nationality	English
Occupation(s)	Historian, diplomat
Known for	His work on Russian history and literature

Sir Bernard ParesKBE (1 March 1867 – 17 April 1949) was an English historian and diplomat. During theFirst World War, he was seconded to the Foreign Ministry inPetrograd, Russia, where he reported political events back toLondon, and worked in propaganda. He returned to London as professor of Russian history. He is best known for his numerous books on Russia, especially his standard textbook,A History of Russia (1926), which had highly detailed coverage of the revolutionary era. He was a very active public speaker in the 1940s in support ofStalin'sSoviet Union.

Bernard Pares was one of ten children of the marriage between Katharine (née Back) and John Pares; he had four brothers (George (Lancelot),Norman, Basil and Howard) and five sisters (Alice, Ethel, Margaret, Constance and May).^[1] His father was the son ofThomas Pares (1790–1866), who wasM.P. forLeicester from 1818 to 1826. His mother was the sister of Admiral SirGeorge Back FRS (1796–1878), the explorer and naturalist. They were a wealthy family, and he inherited a large sum that enabled him to live comfortably despite low academic salaries.^[2]

Pares was educated atHarrow School andTrinity College, Cambridge,^[3] where he graduated in Classics taking a third. He worked over the next ten years as a school teacher spending his vacations touring the main battlefields of theNapoleonic Wars.

He married Margaret Ellis, daughter of Edward Austin Dixon, a dental surgeon in Colchester.^[4] They had three sons, Peter (who became a diplomat), Andrew (who became a soldier) andRichard (a historian), and two daughters, Elizabeth, who was Head of the Foreign Research and Press Service, Baltic Section atChatham House during WWII andUrsula (Susan), who married SirGeoffrey Jellicoe, the landscape architect, becoming an eminent plantswoman and photographer in her own right.^[5] His niece through his brother Basil was the artist and illustratorBip Pares.^[6]

Pares first visited Russia in 1898; at about the same time as he was appointed auniversity extension lecturer in Cambridge.^[7] In 1906, he attended the firstduma at theTaurida Palace inSaint Petersburg and took note on how little the British officers attending could understand the political situation in Russia at the time.^[8] Viewing the study of Russian as less of a scholarly pursuit than an urgent political necessity, he founded the first School of Russian Studies in Britain at theUniversity of Liverpool in 1907.^[8]

In 1908, Pares was promoted to Professor of Russian History, Language, and Literature at theUniversity of Liverpool, which he held until 1917 when he became Professor of Russian at the university's School of Slavonic Studies.^[8] In 1909, he organised the visit to Great Britain of a delegation of the Third Duma on which occasion he was presented with a silver punch bowl and salver with eighteen goblets.^[9] Reputed to be the products of theFaberge workshop, these are currently on display in the foyer of theSchool of Slavonic and East European Studies building atUniversity College London.^[9]

With the outbreak ofWorld War I, Pares was appointed official observer to the Russian army^[7] and later seconded to the staff of the British Embassy in Petrograd.^{[citation needed]} Pares set his hopes for Russia with theProvisional Government and, after theBolshevik revolution, moved to Siberia to supportAlexander Kolchak's army where he gave frequent lectures to theWhite troops. He was awarded aKBE for his services to British relations with Russia in 1919,^[10] but until 1935 he was banned by the newcommunist government from re-entering Russia.

This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Bernard Pares" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Pares was not so much a scholar, but proved an organizer and public speaker — skills he put to use after 1919 when he moved to the recently founded School of Slavonic and East European Studies, then a part ofKing's College London,University of London.^[11]

He became Professor of Russian Language, Literature and History, editor of theSlavonic Review (laterSlavonic and East European Review) and Director of the School. As Director, Pares successfully negotiated the School's re-establishment as an independent institute of the University and its move to the North Wing of the University's newSenate House in Bloomsbury. Pares continued to write on Russian history and literature, publishing most notably hisHistory of Russia (1926 and subsequent editions).

In 1939, Pares retired as Director, subsequently acting as an adviser to the wartime government on Russian affairs, taking a favourable attitude toward Stalin, while deploring some of his excesses. He was very active in public speeches across Britain on behalf of the Soviet alliance with Britain in opposition to Nazi Germany.^[12]

He moved to New York in 1942 where, shortly after completing his autobiography, he died.

This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved. Find sources: "Bernard Pares" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In 2008, the established chair of Russian history at the (now)UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies was renamed the Sir Bernard Pares Chair in Russian History. The established chair had, after Pares, been held byHugh Seton-Watson andGeoffrey Hosking. The first holder of the reinaugurated and newly named chair is Professor Simon Dixon, formerly of theUniversity of Leeds.

• Russia and Reform, London: Constable, 1907.from Archive.org
• Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914–15, London: Constable, 1915.from Archive.org
• The League of Nations and Other Questions of Peace, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.
• A History of Russia, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926.
• My Russian Memoirs, London: Jonathan Cape, 1931.
• Moscow Admits a Critic, London and New York: T. Nelson, 1936.
• The Fall of the Russian Monarchy, London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Alfred Knopf, 1939.
• Russia and the Peace, New York: Macmillan, 1945.
• A Wandering Student, Ithaca, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1948.

• Hughes, Michael. "Bernard Pares, Russian Studies and the Promotion of Anglo-Russian Friendship, 1907-14."Slavonic and East European Review (2000) 78#3: 510-535.online
• Karpovich, Michael. "Sir Bernard Pares"The Russian Review 8#3 (1949), pp. 183-185online
• Pares, Bernard.A Wandering Student, Syracuse, 1948
• Pares, Bernard. "The Objectives of Russian Study in Britain."The Slavonic Review (1922) 1#1: 59-72online.
• Seton-Watson R.W. "Bernard Pares" inThe Slavonic and East European Review. 1949. Vol. 28, No. 70. pp. 28–31.

• Author and Bookinfo.com
• Works by Bernard Pares atOpen Library

• 1867 births
• 1949 deaths
• People from the Borough of Guildford
• People educated at Harrow School
• Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Academics of the University of Liverpool
• Academics of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
• English historians
• Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• Writers about Russia
• People of the Russian Civil War

• Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the ODNB
• Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• EngvarB from July 2017
• Use dmy dates from July 2017
• Articles with hCards
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from November 2016
• Articles needing additional references from December 2022
• All articles needing additional references
• Articles with Open Library links
• Articles needing additional references from April 2015