Obituaries - Nov. 8, 1999

* Richard Marius; Novelist Led Harvard Writing Program

Richard Marius, 66, a novelist and former director of Harvard University’s undergraduate writing program who, in 1995, was accused of displaying anti-Semitic leanings that prompted Vice President Al Gore to withdraw an offer to make him a full-time speech writer. Marius took over Harvard’s expository writing program in 1978 and led it for 16 years, winning the school’s Levinson Award for outstanding teaching in 1990. While directing the writing program, Marius wrote three novels and a biography of Thomas More that was nominated for the National Book Award in 1984. He left the administrative position in 1994 to devote more time to teaching and writing, but stayed on at the university as a senior lecturer. Marius had contributed speeches or parts of speeches for Al Gore over the years and, in 1995, agreed to take a $70,000-a-year position as a full-time speech writer for the vice president. But Gore withdrew the job offer after Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic, complained about a book review that Marius had written for Harvard Magazine in 1992. In the piece, Marius was critical of Israel for its treatment of Palestinians and said that actions by Shin Bet in quelling Palestinian unrest were “eerily similar to the stories of the Gestapo . . . in Nazi-occupied territories of World War II.” Marius denied any anti-Semitic beliefs and later called the comparison “a little bit extreme,” but his professional relationship with Gore was finished. On Friday in Boston of cancer.

* Nadezhda Stalin; Granddaughter of Soviet Dictator

Nadezhda Stalin, 57, the only grandchild of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin who kept his name. Because of the Soviet leader’s ultimate disgrace and fall from power, his seven other grandchildren adopted Stalin’s old Georgian surname of Dzhugashvili. Nadezhda Stalin studied at a theater school but did not graduate. She married the son of writer Alexander Fadeyev. On Sunday in Moscow of cancer.

* Radu Teposu; Romanian Author Opposed Communism

Radu Teposu, 45, an author known for his high morality and fight for democracy in Communist Romania. In the mid-1980s, when communism was at its most repressive, Teposu was targeted by the feared secret police because he was friends with the brother of a journalist who worked at Radio Free Europe. Teposu subsequently lost his job at a state-supervised magazine. Eventually, as the country shed its Communist past, Teposu became editor in chief of the Cuvantul weekly, which fought for democracy and understanding in Romania. He was remembered by Orthodox Abbot Ciprian Zaharia as a writer who “wanted to build up, never to destroy. He had good intentions.” Opposed to nationalism, Teposu wrote three books of literary criticism. A book on postmodernism in Romania was banned under the Communists because it clashed with Communist Party ideology. On Friday in Transylvania when a bus on which he was riding slammed into a parked truck.