This obituary has been written by Paul Gebhardt, associate professor of German.
Natasha is the kind of teacher next to whom you always feel small (as a fellow teacher). The first time that I truly realized this was during her review for promotion to full professor. I observed an Intensive Introductory Russian class for this, and what I saw was masterful in every respect. This was a study in accomplishment — the sheer amount of things that Natasha and her students accomplished within fifty brief minutes was staggering. After ten different activities, I stopped counting.
She started by asking the students questions in Russian, then led a grammar drill, introduced new grammar, students spoke in groups in Russian, one student recited a poem, another student presented about a Russian poet in Russian (it was Pushkin, I believe), and so on — a veritable cornucopia of superior language teaching.
There was something paradoxical about it. Russian at Kenyon under Professor Olshanskaya wasn't for the faint of heart; she rolled her eyes at "bad Russian," coerced students into correcting incorrect statements with fierce looks — but nonetheless, not a single minute passed in which everyone's love for what they were working on was not one hundred percent tangible. It was human. It was authentic.
In the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures (MLL), we were all envious of the commitment to the study of her language that Natasha was able to instill in her students. If she had sixteen students in Intro Russian, fifteen, or even all sixteen, would enroll in Intermediate Russian the next year. And many of them would take "19th Century Russian Literature" or "Russian Cinema" on top of it.
Natasha was not without flaws. She was impatient (she had reason to be). She needed to be in control. She was critical to the point where it could be perceived as cynical. However, it didn't matter because, after all, she was always honest with you as her friend and colleague, and you could trust her. She will remain a friend to me that gave me the feeling that I, and our friendship, mattered. Similarly, she took her students seriously; she went out of her way to make them succeed. She wanted me to succeed as a junior colleague in MLL. In retrospect, I feel she was more nervous about my tenure review than I was. Perhaps she had reason to be. I was awarded tenure.
I remember a reception for a job candidate years ago that I left earlier because I was feeling under the weather. An hour later, Natasha called me at home in order to inquire whether I had everything I needed. She was going to the store, and was there something she needed to pick up for me? Natasha was an ingenious cook and an exceptional and generous host; dinners with friends at her and Don's home in Mount Vernon keep providing me with unforgettable memories.
On a well-known website where students rate college professors, a Kenyon student wrote: "If we were not separated by age and language, I would marry this woman." This is hilarious, but I know it is also truly heartfelt.
To me, Natasha is one of those scholar-teachers in the humanities that justify the name of that academic field. For a liberal arts college such as Kenyon College, she was the quintessential fit. She specialized in linguistics, in translation studies, in the linguistic analysis of texts — but she was equally proficient in the literature of Dostoyevski, of Tolstoi, in Chekhov's theater and short stories, in the poetry of Pushkin and Mandelstam, in the cinema of Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, you name it. She was too humble to admit that her German was excellent (she traveled to Germany often, as her father lived there, and her brother and daughter still do; it fills me with pride remembering how highly she spoke to me of my home country). But never was she puritanical about her work — Natasha loved and enjoyed life. She was a fearless traveler. I remember her humorous stories she brought back from her trips: Germany, France, a trip by ship down the Danube river through several European countries, Costa Rica, China, Mexico, her last trip to Moscow the experience of which, I know, she found sobering.
It will be hard to imagine working at Kenyon without Natasha. But reflecting on her life as a teacher-scholar, as a fierce traveler, there is something encouraging about it. She kept exploring, and was living proof that it was worth it. She demonstrated that it was okay to throw the full weight of who you are behind what you are doing. Beyond the immense sense of loss, that is how I will remember Natasha.
The following remarks were made by Paul Gebhardt, associate professor of German, at a Department of Modern Languages & Literatures faculty meeting.
I will begin this short tribute to our colleague Natasha Olshanskaya with verses by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. They are taken from Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, Sonnet Thirteen, in the translation of Stephen Mitchell.
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.
Be forever dead in Eurydice — more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.
How should we begin to try to grasp the sound referred to here, specific to our great colleague? Natasha Olshanskaya was, of course, a brilliant teacher of Russian language, literature, cinema, and culture. She arrived in 1997 as a visiting professor of Russian, won a tenure-track position in 2000, and transformed the program into one with healthy enrollments and a steady stream of enthusiastic students. Many articles, published internationally, document the reputation of a highly respected scholar of translation studies, Russian cinema studies, and the linguistic analysis of texts.
However, recounting these details does not even begin to register who Natasha was to us. Her biting and self-effacing humor will keep us smiling and laughing for a long time to come. One phrase uttered often since her passing strikes me as profoundly true: as a friend, she was fiercely loyal. Her sincerity belongs in this context, which often also meant telling truths that you may not always have wanted to hear. That was, however, only one aspect of her deeply and genuinely caring nature. Natasha stood with her friends, students, and colleagues, and you could trust her. She was like a second mother to many of her students, as they often point out.
Remembrances of Natasha from students include the following phrases: "here is a woman who has shaped my life," "gentle commander," "one of the most influential people in my life."
As my friend and colleague Fred Baumann remarked, "In talking about the College, she was passionate and profoundly decent, with the same high intellectual and moral standards she upheld in the classroom and in all aspects of her life. At the same time, she was ruled by the deep Russian belief that the fix was always already in, a belief which, however deep, never kept her from fighting the good fight at the same time."
Natasha was also, in a phrase of Friedrich Nietzsche, "true to the earth," of which the absolute mastery of her cooking, and her wonderful and generous hospitality were perfect examples. Plus, she was one of the most widely traveled people I have known — she, literally, saw the world.
Authenticity shone through in every aspect of — while too short — a fully and joyously lived life: as I like to put it, behind everything she did was the full weight of who she was. For me, this is the encouragement that lies in remembering Natalia Olshanskaya.