Robert S. Sullivant, a former executive vice president at the University of Toledo and a noted expert on the Soviet Union, died Thursday in the health center at Swan Creek Retirement Village. He was 89.

He had cancer and suffered cardiopulmonary arrest, family said. He and his wife, Enid, longtime Ottawa Hills residents, most recently lived in Sylvania Township.

He retired in 1990 as a professor emeritus of political science at UT, where he arrived in September, 1973, as executive vice president. He was hired by President Glen Driscoll, with whom he’d worked at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

He was in charge of campus in the president’s absence and oversaw external affairs. When in 1983, for instance, Gov. Richard Celeste proposed more state-aid cuts, Mr. Sullivant conveyed UT’s public position, that Ohio was “eating the capital that over the next decade is going to determine how well educated our people are.”

His wife said, “He was very careful with detail.”

At budget hearings, he patiently presided as departments and programs made their cases for funding.

“Bob treated people with respect,” said Edward Nussel, a retired education professor, former associate dean, and friend. “He had an excellent temperament in the job he was doing. There were so many pieces to put together, and Bob had to do it, and Driscoll depended on him.”

Teaching “animated his life,” his son Steve said. He continued to teach as vice president. “He was a pedagogue at heart,” his son said.

Mr. Sullivant was a post-doctoral exchange student at Moscow State University in 1961, the first of his trips to Russia. His scholarly specialities included nationalities in the Soviet Union and the structure of the Communist Party. His publications included the major study, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, 1917-1957.

He taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he also was graduate-school dean; DePauw University, the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, and the University of South Dakota. He’d been a fellow at Harvard University’s Russian Research Center.

He was born Jan. 23, 1925, in Williams, Ariz., to Gladys and Alexander Sullivant and grew up in Riverside, Calif., where he graduated from high school and started college at age 16. He was a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps in World War II and served as a radar weather officer at Barksdale Field in Shreveport, La.

He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles and a doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Surviving are his wife, Enid Sullivant, whom he married Dec. 27, 1952; sons, Wayne and Stephen Sullivant; daughters, Barbara Akl and Cynthia Byrket; sisters, Eloise Williams and Margaret Pattison, and 12 grandchildren.

Memorial services will be 11 a.m. Saturday in Epworth United Methodist Church, Ottawa Hills, where he was a member. Arrangements are by the Walker Funeral Home.

The family suggests tributes to a charity of the donor’s choice.

Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.

First Published September 28, 2014, 4:53 a.m.