Pavel Sigalov, son of Samoil Sigalov and Berta (Bela) Raitsyna Sigalova, was born in Moscow, USSR, on December 29, 1929 but was raised from age five in Ukraine. He passed away at age 95 in Laramie, Wyoming on January 8, 2025.
Pavel’s parent’s had left Ukraine for Moscow before he was born, but they returned to Ukraine in the 1930s to begin a new life. In 1940 they were living 20 miles from the border of a divided Poland when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union to take the rich black soil lands of Ukraine and southern Russia. Pavel was eleven years old when – on a quickly commissioned freight train – he, his mother, and brother Jacob fled a rapidly advancing Nazi army. His father was immediately engaged in the war effort, so Pavel became the de facto man of the house. Mother and sons followed a long, treacherous road to the southern town of Kurtamysh in Kurgan Province where they lived through war, drought, and famine.
In the early 1950s, Pavel graduated from the Pedagogical Institute of Cherkassy, Ukraine and took up his first high school teaching post in a small Ukrainian village, Verbovetz, a five mile walk (or horse cart ride) from the nearest railroad line. It was an idyllic two years in pristine countryside with good, salt-of-the-earth people who cared for him as he for their children. After that experience he enrolled in the graduate program in Slavic Linguistics at Leningrad State University. In the early 1960s, with his doctoral degree in hand, he began a highly successful academic career at Tartu State University in Estonia (with two stints in Krakow, Poland as a visiting faculty member). He and his wife Natalia had one daughter, Tatiana Sigalova, who is a poet, artist, and scholar. He worked at Tartu University for approximately eighteen years and, upon the death of his mother, Pavel submitted an emigration application to permanently depart the Soviet Union. In punishment for this act, Pavel was fired immediately from his position at the university. He arrived in Texas where his younger brother Jacob was living and moved on to San Francisco where he began seeking university employment. His search brought him to the University of Wyoming in 1983 where he worked in the Russian section of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages (with volunteer stints teaching Russian history in the History Department as well). He took two years leave when he was invited to teach Slavic comparative linguistics at Harvard University. Although he was asked to remain at Harvard, Pavel was eager to return to his American hometown of Laramie, where he would exclaim from the Vedauwoo rocks, “This is the real America!” He was a devoted teacher and a prolific scholar at the University of Wyoming until the fine age of 83.
Pavel was both serious and jovial. His life was filled with music and books, swimming and karate, excursions to the mountains, and warm gatherings with family and friends. He spoke many languages and traveled extensively to experience the larger world.
Pavel is survived by his beloved daughter Tatiana Sigalova (Tartu, Estonia), his younger brother Jack and Sofia Sigaloff (South Carolina), cherished cousins spread across three continents, and countless students, colleagues, and friends. At Pavel’s request, cremation has taken place. There will be a private interment of cremains in the Laramie Jewish Community Center’s section of Greenhill Cemetery. So, raise a glass to a man whose life was unusually long and incredibly rich. May his memory be a blessing. Donations in Pavel’s honor can be given to the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Wyoming.
