With faith in Christ and hope in the resurrection, we share the news of the repose of John Barrett Dunlop, SVS Press author and longtime friend, former seminarian, and supporter of St Vladimir’s Seminary. John fell asleep in the Lord on October 14, 2023. John is survived by his wife of 59 years, Olga Verhovskoy Dunlop, daughter of former Professor of Dogmatics at St Vladimir’s Seminary (1952-1981), Serge S. Verhovskoy, as well as his four children, Matushka Maria Tobias and son-in-law Archpriest Peter Tobias (M.Div. ‘01) of Kenai, AK; Olga T. Dunlop of Palo Alto, CA; the Very Rev. John S. Dunlop (M.Div. ‘94), Dean Emeritus and Professor at St Herman’s Seminary, Dean of Kodiak Island Deanery, serving at Nativity of Our Lord Orthodox Church in Kodiak, AK (OCA); and Catherine T. Dunlop, Professor of European History, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, as well as seven grandchildren.

John Dunlop was born on September 10, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts, to John Thomas and Dorothy Emily (Webb) Dunlop. He received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1964 and completed two years of coursework at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS) before completing master’s and doctoral degrees at Yale University.

Dunlop was an emeritus senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was an expert on Soviet and Russian politics from 1985 to the present, Russia’s two wars in Chechnya, ethnic Russian nationalism, and the politics of religion in Russia. His latest research focused on the origins of the Putin regime in 1998–99.

In testimony before a subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives in July 1991, Dunlop predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, which occurred the following December. He chronicled that collapse in his book, which is still in print, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Princeton University Press, 1993, 1995), and in an essay that appeared in the Journal of Cold War Studies (no. 1, 2003).

In November 1999, Dunlop testified on the subject of the war in Chechnya before the Helsinki Committee. In July 2001, he testified on the same subject before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

His publications include The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule (2012), Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 1998), The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises: a Critique of Russian Counter-Terrorism (Ibidem Verlag, 2006), The New Russian Nationalism (Praeger Publishers, 1985), and The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism (Princeton University Press, 1983).

John Dunlop also wrote several books on spiritual topics in the Orthodox Christian tradition, including Staretz Amvrosy: Model for Dostoevsky’s Staretz Zosima (Nordland, 1972), and Exodus: St John Maximovitch Leads His Flock out of Shanghai (SVS Press, 2017). He also contributed to many translated works, including The Living God (SVS Press, 1989), in collaboration with his wife, Olga. 

A professor and department chair at Oberlin College from 1970 to 1983, Dunlop was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1978–79. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford and Princeton Universities, a visiting Olin Senior Fellow at Radio Liberty in Munich, and an academic visitor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dunlop served as acting director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Stanford in 2008. From 1997 to 2003, he was a member of the Overseers’ Committee to Visit the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University.

John Dunlop was a parishioner at Nativity of the Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church in Menlo Park, CA, where funeral services were held on Saturday, October 21, 2023.

May John’s memory be eternal! 

Article adapted from hoover.org and prabook.com