Barabtarlo, Gennady Alexandrovich (Gene, 1949-2019), Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature at the University of Missouri, Columbia, was a leading Nabokov scholar and the foremost translator of Nabokov into Russian in his time. He wrote a dissertation on the early Pasternak at the University of Moscow (1966-72) and taught and researched at the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (1970-78), before emigrating to the US. He wrote a PhD on Pnin at the University of Illinois (1985), which he turned into the book Phantom of Fact: A Guide to Nabokov's Pnin (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1989). Among his other books on Nabokov are Aerial View: On Nabokov's Art and Metaphysics (Bern: Peter Lang), Sverkayushchiy obruch: O dvizhushchey sile u Nabokova (A Shimmering Hoop: On the Movement of Nabokov's Themes, St. Petersburg, Hyperion, 2003) and Sochinenie Nabokova (Nabokov's Composition, St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbakh, 2011). He edited a collection of Nabokov's dream-writings, Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time (Princeton UP), 2018. He has translated into Russian all Nabokov's English stories and three novels, including Pnin and The Original of Laura. He coedited with Charles Nicol A Small Alpine Form: Studies in Nabokov's Short Fiction (Garland, 1992). In emigration, he became a close friend of Nabokov's sister, Elena Sikorski, and of Véra and Dmitri Nabokov. He wrote poetry and fiction and was a chess master and a photographer.
The Nabokov community mourns the loss of Professor Barabtarlo. See Brian Boyd's tribute to his memory here, Stanislav Shvabrin's here, Olga Voronina's here, Maurice Couturier's here, Stephen Blackwell's here, Dana Dragunoiu's here, Priscilla Meyer's here, and José Vergara's here.