George C. Guins, 1887 - 1971

George C. Guins is best known to historians as the administrative secretary (upravliaiushchii delami) of the Siberian (later All-Russian) anti-Bolshevik government at Omsk. Privy to governmental decisions in this capacity as well as in concurrent service as deputy minister for education and foreign affairs, he described the workings of the government and the anti-Bolshevik campaign in Siberia, 1918-1920, in his published memoir, Sibir', soiuzniki i Kolchak (Peking, 1921).

Less well-known is his career as a legal philosopher, journalist, and writer and lecturer on the Soviet Union. Born in Novogeorgievsk (now Modlin, Poland) on 27 April 1887, he studied law at St. Petersburg University under the direction of the eminent jurist and legal philosopher Leon Petrazycki, obtaining his degree in 1909. Entering government service in the Resettlement Office (Pereselencheskoe upravlenie) of the Ministry of Agriculture, he continued legal studies in his spare time, obtaining an advanced degree in 1915 and remaining at St. Petersburg University as a lecturer. At this time he completed a dissertation on water rights in Central Asia.

The 1917 Revolution saw his promotion in government service to the post of chief legal counselor of the Ministry of Provisions, but following the Bolshevik coup in October, he left for Omsk, where he was drawn into service in the White government formed there the following summer. At the conclusion of the Civil War, he found himself in Harbin, China, where he served on the administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway until 1926, first as director of the chancellery and later as chief controller. At the same time, he edited and wrote for Russkoe obozrenie, published in Peking, and helped found the Harbin Law Faculty, a unique émigré institution training lawyers in China. Here he lectured almost until his departure for the United States in 1941, made necessary by Japanese pressure due to his independent position in Harbin politics. During this period he accomplished his greatest scholarly achievements in legal philosophy, with such publications as Novye idei v prave i osnovnye problemy sovremennosti (Harbin, 1931-1932), Uchenie o prave i politicheskaia ekonomiia (Harbin, 1933), Ocherki sotsial'noi filosofii (Harbin, 1936), all now bibliographic rarities.

Following his arrival in the United States, he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, editing for a brief period the émigré newspaper Russkaia zhizn', and lecturing at the University of California at Berkeley and the Army Language School in Monterey. Not finding an application for his specialization in legal philosophy, he turned to teaching Russian and Soviet civilization, history, and law, publishing numerous articles and two books on Soviet affairs: Soviet Law and Soviet Society (The Hague, 1954) and Communism on the Decline (New York, 1956). Even after retiring from active teaching, he continued to lecture and write, served as a consultant to the Voice of America until 1964, and contributed an oral history to the UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office's Russian émigré program. He died in September 1971.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.