Obituary of George Ivanovich Sviatov

George Sviatov (Georgiy Ivanovich Sviatov) was born in 1931 in the family of Rear Admiral Ivan Sviatov, who during the Second World War was one of the most prominent Navy Commanders and saved thousands of lives during the operation of evacuation of the Baltic Fleet from Tallin. George Sviatov graduated from the Naval Engineering Academy in St.Petersburg and for several years was stationed in Severodvinsk – the main Russian shipbuilding yard. He retired from the navy as Captain 1st rank and PhD in naval architecture and joined the Institute of the United States and Canada, Moscow, a famous Russian foreign policy think tank, as a senior military analyst. He received a PhD in history and became a professor of modern Russian military history and an expert in US-Soviet military relations. During his visits to the US he read lectures at Columbia, Brown and Harvard University, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley and was a Visiting Fellow and a Visiting Professor at Brookings Institution and at a School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University He moved to the US in 1990 with his wife – a well-known arts critic and writer Alexandra Pistunova. They settled in Bethesda, Baltimore and George Sviatov continued to work on his research projects. He published numerous articles and papers on various aspects of US-Russian relations and on comparative history of USA and Russian defense and naval policy and became a distinguished naval and defense analyst and author. He is survived by his third wife Liubov Markova, his daughter Maria Whyte who lives in Moscow, his granddaughter Nina Whyte and his sister Vera Sviatova-Traimond who lives in France. George Sviatov will be remembered by his friends and family as a kind and thoughtful father and brother and a loyal husband. His friends both in the US and in Russia will remember his good humour and his wonderful open heart.