Wolf Ladejinsky papers
Collection
0606-GWP
Wolf Isaac Ladejinsky was born on March 15, 1899 in the Russian Empire and immigrated to the United States, where he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in agricultural economy in 1928. In 1945, Ladejinsky was appointed to serve with General Douglas McArthur in occupied Japan, where he worked on land reform. Starting in 1955, Ladejinsky worked on land reform in other East and Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Taiwan, and South Vietnam. This collection contains photographs documenting the professional and personal activities of agricultural economist Wolf Ladejinsky.
This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections Reading Room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection.
Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy.
Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.
Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the special collections reading room staff.
1.5 Linear Feet (3 Hollinger Boxes)
1000 Photographs : B/W and color
English
Japanese
Vietnamese
Russian
Wolf Ladejinsky was born in the Russian Empire on March 15, 1899 and became an American agricultural economist who worked on land reform in Japan from 1945 to 1954, and in other Asian countries from 1955 to 1961. This accession consists of 1000 photographs from Japan, Vietnam, and other countries in Asia, as well as copies of certificate of naturalization, identification cards, a 1-dollar bill, and a wallet. The majority of materials date from 1920 to 1970.
Wolf Isaac Ladejinsky was born on March 15, 1899 in Katerynopil in the Russian Empire, in what is now Ukraine. He fled Soviet Ukraine after the Russian Revolution in 1921, leaving his three sisters who remained in Katerynopil, and immigrated to the United States the following year. He attended Columbia University and graduated with a degree in agricultural economy in 1928; shortly afterwards, in 1933, he was hired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and transferred to the department's Foreign Agricultural Service, where he focused on Asian agriculture. After the defeat of Japan in 1945, Ladejinsky was assigned to the State Department and appointed to serve with General Douglas McArthur's Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) staff. During the occupation of Japan, Ladejinsky worked with the former Japanese Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Hiroo Wada, to institute land reform, purchasing land from landlords to redistribute to farmers. He worked in Japan until 1954, when McCarthyism led some U.S. activists to accuse Ladejinsky of having sympathies to the Communist party and of being vulnerable to blackmail, since his sisters were living in the Soviet Union. Ladejinsky was transferred from the State Department to the Department of Agriculture, and his security status was revoked. However, his security clearance was restored in 1955 when he transferred to a post in South Vietnam. Ladejinsky worked in land reform in South Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem until 1961, and continued working in southeast Asian countries, including Thailand and Taiwan, until his return to the United States. He died in Washington, D.C. on July 3, 1975.
This collection was donated to the University of Maryland Libraries by the Estate of Wolf Ladejinsky on July 21, 2022.
This collection has been minimally processed. The collection came to the Libraries in no particular order. In 2024, Eleanor Drummond grouped photographs smaller than 7x10 inches in acid-free paper packets of ten photographs each and then in acid-free folders with four packets each. Materials have not been arranged chronologically or grouped by subject because no descriptive information was included with the donation. The entire collection was re-housed in acid-free boxes.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives