Wayne Vucinich

Wayne S. Vucinich was Emeritus Professor of History, and one of the founders of Russian, Slavic, and East European studies at Stanford University. Known to generations of students as "Uncle Wayne," Vucinich rose from humble origins as an orphaned shepherd boy in Herzegovina to become a legendary professor who taught that the "Communist Bloc" was far from the gray monolithic entity characterized by U.S. policymakers in the postwar era. He wrote and edited many studies on the region, including Serbia Between East and West (1954), The Ottoman Empire: Its Record and Legacy (1965), The Peasant in 19th-Century Russia (1968), Contemporary Yugoslavia (1969), Russia and Asia (1972) and Eastern Europe (1973).