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3 Jus Gentium: J. Int'l Legal Hist. 275 (2018)
Looking for Professor B. E. Nolde

handle is hein.journals/jusge3 and id is 275 raw text is: LOOKING FOR PROFESSOR B.E. NOLDE V. V. VEEDER* Professor Sergei Nikolaevich Lebedev (1934-2016), like all great teachers of legal history, was a prolific sower of seeds. He understood the contribution made to the present from the past, without which the future lacks direction. In the words of the English legal historian, F. W. Maitland (1850-1906): Today we study the day before yesterday, in order that yesterday may not paralyse today, and today may not paralyse tomorrow. Professor Lebedev would mention almost casually, invariably as a question, an obscure event, work or person, leaving his listener stunned like a mullet at a most relevant but unknown piece of legal history's vast jigsaw. Over the thirty-five years or so of our friendship, he did this to me several times, including references to the Russian Provisional Government's draft arbitration law (1917), the Lena Goldfields arbitration (1930), the influence of London arbitration on the foundation the USSR Maritime Arbitration Commission (1930), and the early origins of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (1961). On each occasion, with me as with others, it was his questions requiring answers that caused his students to nurture these seeds into seedlings. This story begins with Professor Lebedev as an arbitrator, finishing early an international arbitration hearing in Paris. As he told me, with unexpected free time in that great city, he looked through the local telephone book for the name of a family he knew, but had never met. He rang the telephone number; and a lady answered him in Russian. She invited him to the family apartment. He spent the evening there, studying old law books in the library of an international lawyer, a scholar, public figure and diplomat, exiled * An earlier version of the present Note first appeared in the Russian language as part of a Festschrift dedicated to S. N. Lebedev. See A. I. Muranov, et al. (eds.), In Memoriam: V. A. Kabatov and S. N. Lebedev (Moscow, 2017). The author acknowledges with many thanks the research undertaken by S. Melnikova-Raich. 275