Richard Bernstein, Times correspondent, critic and author, dies in 80

Richard Bernstein, a former correspondent and critic of the New York Times, died his deep knowledge of Asia and Europe in reports from the Tiananmen Square to the Pastel, who wrote things as he saw in 10 books led by an unconscious intellectual curiosity, on Monday in Manhattan. It was 80.

His son, Elias Bernstein, said that his death, in the hospital, is caused by pancreatic cancer, less than eight weeks ago. Mr. Bernstein lived in Brooklyn.

For more than two decades in the Times, Mr. Bernstein brought deep historical knowledge, a generous writing style, a stubborn thread contrary to various materials such as the meaning of the French Revolution, the nature of Chinese tyranny, the “multiple strands” in the 1993 global trade bombing trial, and the importance of waves in politics in the academic language.

Writing about the Danube River in 2003 after a 1750 -mile journey along, Mr. Bernstein Note: “Rivers are symbols. You cannot think of Mississippi also thinking about the American drama of sweat. Seine is Parisian elegance; German national identity, the yellow river is a distant China.”

As for the water that was slipped from the black forest to the Black Sea, it was the “river of the wonderful cities stricken in the former Austrian Empire”, “Danube Al -Azraq” from Johann Strauss, the Holocaust and “stabbing the iron”.

His journalist had an elegant sense of human affairs, and often an argument designed with skill in comprehensive reports on Earth. Mr. Bernstein, who has retained throughout his life a bit of nervousness and ability to wonder the Camel correspondent, never tired of hard work.

“Frankly, I do not like books that start from the hypothesis that things are very important so that no generalizations can be allowed,” he wrote in “fragility of glory”, his rich image in 1990 for France, which is a state “in the middle of the road between a specific continuous dream and an unstable reality.” It was a nation, for Mr. Bernstein, who sought to “glow with the flame of civilization itself” even when it is wrinkled “its military and moral collapse in the face of the Nazis.”

If it was clear that the suffering was unable, Mr. Bernstein was also optimistic. The son of the first generation of Jewish immigrants from Hungary and Belarus, originated in a chicken farm in the country’s rural state, where he learned to sort small, medium, large, and very large eggs, and was studying in Nidal.

The clothes were manually; Hanoka gifts, modest. The base of the family was the atom in the garden could not be chosen until the water was boiled. At the age of nine, sitting on the bosom of his father, he was driving a Pick Ab farm truck to collect eggs on the chicken planet.

From that experience, he took hatred in the situation, a suspicion of fashion, and the impatience of the taboo and the deep faith in the American possibility. He believed in a fair vibration to everyone, including his press subjects. In his opinion, it was the matter for America, as the post -war force in Asia and Europe, which fell responsible for protecting and extending the freedom that his family benefited.

The author, Katie Marton, said in an interview: “The Jewish farm has not escaped from a chicken farm, and he never deviated from his association with what America should represent.”

in Send from BeijingWhere he was sent to his report shortly after the massacre of protesting students on 3-4 June 1989, Mr. Bernstein quoted a saying used in the imperial China to persuade people to inform traitors: “For the great issue, destroy your loved ones.”

With the guarantee of a researcher in China, it was occupied to ask whether, in this light, that the massacre of the Chinese Liberation Army of hundreds of students was “a product of confusion in the twentieth century” or a reflection of the long traditions of the country of the constant ruling cruel. As with Mr. Bernstein, it was an attempt to reach beyond the news to the deeper historical currents of events.

His conclusion was that there is something new and unique in denial of the bald government of what happened and in its “completely modern campaign for continuous propaganda” against “thugs”, as the government described its victims.

“The idea here is that any government opposition is not only wrong,” he wrote. “It is criminal, betrayal, anti -revolutionary, and those who have led her do not deserve any respect or human treatment.”

Mr. Bernstein, a democratic of conservative views at times, was wrestling with the ideological erosion of America long before the cancellation of culture, the wars of worlds between the sexes, and the country’s current angry fracture on the policies of diversity, equality and integration.

Gently ridicule “On the Language” column In the New York Times, since 1990, he wrote an academic conference attended by that was announced as “the re -writing (post -colonialism) (post) (post)”, and he noticed that the arches were a way to make readers think again of the meanings “that were always taken as a Muslim order.”

He wrote: “The brackets were placed not only about words but also about parts of the words.” “There was one paper entitled” Locating the United Nations (re -) advanced desire: ruqyah transformations and postmodern man. “

Depending on this conference, he continued that “our basic values” were now called “dominant discourse”, or even “total discourse”, which was felt by the famous “from outside the structure of power.”

Commentary on these increasingly disputed American values, if he is aware of their need to develop, they gave his concerns about “Dictatorship of Virtue: Cultural Pluralism and Battle for the Future of America”, published in 1994. Witness, CAN-Do.

It was a book that won more enemies of Mr. Bernstein than friends, even because it was involved in the ideological cracks designated for growth. It has never shrunk from difficult topics: In 2009, the “East, West and Sex: History” was published, which is an exploration of the relationship between sex and strength through the meetings of Western explorers, merchants and tomorrow with oriental cultures.

“He believed in truth, regardless of where the chips fell,” said David Margolik, journalist and author. “No one handed him over. His safety was absolute. He wrote what he thought about without looking at his shoulder.”

Richard Paul Bernstein was born in New York on May 5, 1944, the first two children from Herbert and Cleier (Brown) Bernstein. After a period of time, the family moved to the poultry farm in East Hadmoum, Connecticut, after the Jewish Agricultural Association, an organization established to provide agriculture training for migrants in Eastern Europe, gave his father a loan.

Richard attended a Orthodox Senegue-“An old, vibrant building that rises above a groove near the soda store,” in the words of his friend Donald Peruyck for life-and graduated from Nathan Hill Ray Secondary School in a near mood, before the University of Connecticut attended, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in history.

Wanderlust was already a fist on him. A master’s degree at Harvard University continued in history and East Asian languages, a course that was partially chosen because it provides the ability to move to Taiwan to study the Mandarin. I was born a passion for Asia that you never left. This led to the jobs of Csringer and a subsequent correspondent at Beijing magazine for Time magazine before joining the Times in 1982, initially as a reporter covering Metropolitan New York.

Mr. Bernstein later served the position of head of the United Nations Office, Head of the Paris Office, the National Cultural Correspondent, the Book critic and the head of the Berlin Office before leaving the Times in 2006.

Judy Petz, his younger sister, remembered how their father gave him a BB pistol when he was 11 years old. He was shooting on birds, one day he was wounded, and he was terrified to find out how the bird struggled and suffered from what he did. She said, “He did not use the gun again.”

Deep kindness was accompanied by Mr. Bernstein to the end. Although he is not religious, he joined the Torah study group late life, bent on exploring the meaning of his Jews.

In addition to his son and sister, Mr. Bernstein survived his wife, Zhongmei LeeFamous Chinese dancer and dance designer.

“We all know that death comes,” said Ms. Pitts before his death. “I liked to get more, but now I understand that I will not do it. I accept it and I am not afraid. I lived a wonderful and interesting life.”