Vladimir Borschev Obituary

Vladimir Borisovich Borschev

Amherst, MA - Vladimir Borisovich Borschev (Volodja), 90, of Amherst, Massachusetts, died peacefully on February 14, in home hospice care, with loving family nearby and his wife at his side. He was born December 9, 1935, in Voronezh, Russia, to Boris Vasiljevich Borschev and Zoya Ivanovna Borscheva (Reutova). As the Germans approached in 1941, his father's aviation engine factory and all the workers' families were evacuated from Voronezh to Kazan', where they were placed with "host families" and later given apartments built by German prisoners of war. Volodja was the Kazan' high-jump champion in the late 1950s. He graduated from the Kazan' Aviation Institute in 1959, where his major in Aviation Radio Technology led to work on the earliest computers. He moved to Moscow for graduate study and work at VINITI, the All-Soviet Union (later All-Russian) Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (PhD 1968), and was a research scientist there until 2014 (Doctor of Science in 1993). His main fields were formal grammars, model-theoretic syntax, semantics of programming languages, logical structure and semantics of databases, and later also lexical and formal semantics of natural languages. His work, part of the cooperation of mathematicians and linguists which contributed to the rise of formal linguistics in Russia, was highly regarded by all who knew it.

He married his first wife, Lorina Nikolskaja, in 1961 in Moscow; they divorced in 1977. He married his second wife, Lidia Knorina, in 1978, also in Moscow; she died in 1994. He married his third wife, Barbara Partee, in 1997 in Amherst. For eighteen years they happily lived half the year in Moscow and half in Amherst, then settled in Amherst for good.

His later works included articles co-authored with his second wife and with his third wife, both linguists. He taught courses on database theory and formal grammars at universities in Moscow and co-taught courses on mathematics for linguists with Barbara at UMass Amherst, where he was Adjunct Professor of Linguistics from 1998 until 2025.

In addition to being a productive research scientist, he was a prolific and skilled diarist and memoirist. He published a collection chronicling the early linguistic fieldwork expeditions led by Aleksandr Kibrik and Sandro Kodzasov to document and describe languages of the Caucasus, Za Jazykom (Going after Languages), and wrote many unpublished diaries chronicling trips and small adventures. He shared beautiful memoirs with family and friends of deceased friends. (The book and more are on his Russian website https://vborschev.narod.ru.)

After the passing of his beloved second wife, he poured his heart and his grief into his book Istoria Bolezni (Medical Case History), his moving response to her illness and her subsequent psychosis, depression, and suicide. He also published a posthumous volume of her poems and songs. Both are included in a Russian memorial website he set up: https://lidiaknorina.narod.ru/.

Volodja loved the simple pleasures of gathering mushrooms and berries, of hiking in the woods, of swimming in the little lake near his dacha outside Moscow. In Amherst, to his delight, he and Barbara discovered wild cranberries growing by the nearby Quabbin Reservoir and made annual cranberrying trips, often taking friends along. He surprised Barbara by clearing a path from the end of Hobart Lane out to the UMass Agricultural field for easy cross-country skiing access, which soon became an informal community path.

He and Barbara loved combining business and pleasure on trips that included linguistic conferences or guest lecturing in places where they had, or made, good friends - a semester in Leipzig and one in Christchurch, NZ, wonderful shorter visits to Brazil (Sao Paulo and the Pantanal), Prague, Georgia (Tbilisi and Vardzia), Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Israel, Hungary, Sweden, China, Latvia, and Mexico (Mexico City and the Yucatan). Memorable were their two long cross-country camping trips, the first heading south via the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway to meet up with dear friends of his in New Orleans and take them to the Grand Canyon, then heading up to Salt Lake City to visit Barbara's son Joel's family and take Barbara's then 7-year-old granddaughter Rachael camping in Zion National Park, visiting more National Parks on the way home; and the second, together with Barbara's son Dave and his wife Carol, camping across Canada and via the Canadian Rockies and the Alaska Highway to Dave and Carol's home in Fairbanks and then camping in Denali National Park and exploring traces of Russian Alaska. Friends, family, and colleagues remember him as a kind, curious, insightful person with a wry spark of humor and a twinkle in his eye.

Volodja is survived by his wife Barbara; his son Sergey Nikolsky and his wife Ronit; his stepdaughter Valeria Knorin and her husband Vassily Tanas; and his stepsons Morriss Partee, Dave Partee with wife Carol Kaynor, and Joel Partee. Additionally, he leaves his brother and his family, his granddaughters Noa and Gaya Nikolsky, and his step grandchildren Karina Tanas, Tim Tanas, Rachael Partee, and Sean Partee. He was predeceased by his parents Boris Vasiljevich Borschev and Zoya Ivanovna Borscheva and by his first wife Lorina Nikolskaya and his second wife Lidia Knorina.

He was buried in North Amherst Cemetery on February 24, in a small family ceremony; a later Celebration of Life will be private. The Douglass Funeral Home was entrusted with arrangements. Donations in his memory would be welcome to the VNA and Hospice of Cooley Dickinson Hospital or to the charitable organization of your choice.