Professor John Klier was a pioneering historian of Russian Jewry and a pivotal figure in academic Jewish studies and East European history in the UK and beyond.

John Doyle Klier was born in 1944 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and his family lived briefly in Washington before settling in Syracuse, New York. His father taught aeronautical engineering at Syracuse University. Brought up as a Catholic, John attended Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, for his BA and MA in history. He pursued doctoral study at the University of Illinois — long a powerhouse in Russian and Soviet history — where his interest in Russian Jewry was stimulated. He was intrigued, in his investigations of pre-revolutionary Russia, that little research had been conducted on Russian Jewry for most of the 20th century. His PhD dissertation examined the process by which Tsarist Russia, after the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, fitfully absorbed Jews into the Russian state system. This work was sharpened and expanded into his first book, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia (1986), now considered a seminal text in modern Jewish history.

Given the Soviet censorship in the so-called “period of stagnation”, when forays into sensitive topics such as “the Jewish question” were taboo, Klier officially purported to study the Russian popular press, a seemingly innocuous subject. This gave him access to the material necessary to produce a groundbreaking history of Russian Jewry. He made good use of his experience as a postdoctoral researcher at Leningrad State University in 1977-78 and 1980-81. He also became so proficient in Russian that he could lecture eloquently in that language, almost in a class of his own among the non-Russian born scholars of East European Jewry. This is part of the reason why he became the greatest interlocutor between Jewish historians and social scientists in Eastern Europe, and their colleagues in the West.

Klier’s book, co-edited with Shlomo Lombroza, Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Jewish History (1991), is widely regarded as the gold standard in a contentious field. It argued that pogroms were hardly ever directed from the top down nor did they function as a direct trigger for the massive flight of Jews to the West. While scrupulously analysing each of the violent outbreaks, the book sought to situate the pogroms in the context of social hostility in Tsarist Russia.

In 1991 Klier was one of the first foreign scholars to undertake in-depth research on Jews in Soviet archives, and in the ensuing years he mined resources in Kiev, Moscow, St Petersburg and Minsk. In 1993 he received a grant from the US National Endowment for the Humanities to survey Jewish materials in post-Soviet archives, and scores, if not hundreds, of researchers of East European Jewry benefited from his insight and guidance. Few important books in East European Jewish history fail to record their debt to Klier.

His second important monograph, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855-1881 (1995), a sequel to Russia Gathers Her Jews, drew on a greater range of material. It focused on “the interplay of public opinion and official policy” that assumed so large a part in Jewish history and established Klier’s reputation as the leading expert on Russia’s perceptions and treatment of the Jews from the late 19th century to the end of the Tsarist empire.

In the last few months Klier completed the manuscript of Southern Storms: Russians, Jews and the Crisis of 1881-2, which will be published by Cambridge University Press. It explores the nature of pogrom violence in Russia and the responses to the events of 1881-82 by the Imperial authorities and by Russian and Jewish society. He was working, as well, on a study of Jews and military recruitment in the Russian Empire, focused on the cantonist battalions. Adapting his original research he published a book in Russian, Rossia sobiraet svoikh evreev (Gesharim, 2000), a critical text for the Russian-speaking student and scholarly community in Eastern Europe and Israel. Klier also was author, with his wife, Helen, of a popular history, The Search for Anastasia: Solving the Riddle of the Lost Romanovs (1995), which showed that the legends of Anastasia’s survival were just that, legends. Klier was bemused that this book outsold all his academic work combined.

Klier began his university teaching career at Fort Hays State University in Kansas where he proved himself a prodigious scholar and excellent teacher, and was promoted to full professor.

In 1989 a lectureship was established in East European Jewish history at University College London. Klier took the appointment, despite the drop in rank from a professorship to a lectureship. His rise back up the academic ladder was swift. He was promoted in 1993 to Reader and assumed the Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Professorship of Modern Jewish History in 1996.

Klier was a tireless advocate of Jewish scholarship in Eastern Europe, and passionately developed East European Jewish history in the US, continental Europe and the UK. His department at UCL became the largest university-based programme of Jewish studies outside Israel and the US. He was a talented teacher; he supervised numerous postgraduate dissertations; and his lectures deftly interwove politics, religion and social life with the greatest sophistication, while remaining accessible to a wide audience.

He was co-editor of East European Jewish Affairs and served as president of the British Association of Jewish Studies. He was a consultant to Yad Hanadiv (now the Rothschild Foundation Europe) and the Avi Chai Foundation, and a moving force on the boards of the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig and the Sefer foundation, concerned with advancing Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe.

He published articles in dozens of journals and scholarly books, refereed countless manuscripts for university presses and always was willing to lend cheerful support to colleagues to navigate the archives, and even the alleyways, of Eastern Europe. His scholarly achievements are all the more impressive considering the effort he expended teaching undergraduates and postgraduates, service to his department and university, and frequent lectures and courses for the general public.

As the chairman of the department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies for most of the 1990s he was famed for nurturing a refreshingly open-minded and convivial atmosphere. On almost any given day one could find scholars visiting from Europe, Israel and the US. Many remarked on the department’s warmth and collegiality.

Klier’s tastes were diverse. He was an expert in many literatures, which he preferred to read in their original languages. He was versed in classical music, art, opera and theatre. He was a skilled fencer, and he could carry a spirited conversation about American and English football. He imbibed the humanistic values of all the cultures he encountered. His kindness, humour and good nature were infectious.

Klier is survived by his wife, Helen Mingay, and their daughter and son.

Professor John Klier, historian of Russian Jewry, was born December 13, 1944. He died on September 23, 2007, aged 62