Maria Dikareva Scott, a teacher, writer, and scholar whose parents were Russian peasants, died peacefully on Nov. 5, 2004, in her home on Peaceable Ridge Road. She was 92 years old. A resident of Ridgefield since 1948, Ms. Scott was the widow of Time-Life correspondent and author, John Scott. She was born on Dec. 21, 1911, in a tiny village halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia. Her father, Ivan Kalinich, and mother, Yekaterina Ivanovna, were poor, illiterate peasants who worked hard to support their large family. Thanks to free education after the Revolution, they produced two teachers, two engineers, two doctors, an economist, and a college dean. Always known as Masha to her family and friends, Maria Scott studied mathematics and chemistry at the Mendeleyevsky Institute in Moscow, and in 1933 moved to the brand new city of Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains. There she met a young American college dropout, John Scott, son of Scott Nearing, a prominent radical economist, educator and proponent of simple living. Mr. Scott was working in the steel mills as a welder. After a whirlwind courtship they were married in 1934, and had two daughters: Leigh (Elka), born in 1935, and Elena, born in 1938. Masha Scott continued studying and teaching, and was even crowned the city's chess champion. In 1938 the family moved to Moscow, where John Scott became a journalist. After years of trying, he finally succeeded in obtaining exit visas for his family so they could come to the United States. They left Moscow in the summer of 1941, shortly after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and traveled by train to Vladivostok, then to Japan, where they got passage on the Asama Maru, the last Japanese boat to leave for Honolulu before Pearl Harbor. The Scott family lived in New York City, where Ms. Scott learned English and began studying at New York University, while her husband wrote Behind the Urals, a book that has become a standard text for Soviet studies. He worked for Time & Life Inc., spending several years in Europe during World War II as a war correspondent. In 1943 Masha Scott became active as a lecturer for the Russian War Relief Organization, and was a featured speaker at the New York Herald Tribune Forum on Cultural Events in October 1945. That same year she co-authored with Pearl Buck a book about her life, Talk About Russia with Masha Scott. After the war, Mr. Scott became head of Time's Berlin bureau, and the family moved to that war-torn city, where, together with the French, British, Russian, and American conquerors, they lived in luxury amidst a defeated and divided Germany. The Berlin blockade was in full force in 1948 when the Scott family returned to the U.S., flying out over the Soviet zone with bag and baggage, which included two large dogs, two grand pianos, a sailboat and a Jeep. John and Masha Scott picked Ridgefield for their home, and settled in a prefab on a wooded ridge with a spectacular view. The then Standpipe Road (now Peaceable Ridge Road) was a dirt path with only three other houses. During the next decade they designed and built with their own hands and the help of Don Sturtevant, an experienced local carpenter, an imposing, four-story stone house. Masha Scott busied herself with her children, flower and vegetable gardens, and occasional forays into the city for opera, museums and shopping, while continuing studies at New York University and the New School. She and her husband had an active social and community life as members of the First Congregational Church, the Couples Club and the Lions Club. They traveled together when Mr. Scott was sent on his many assignments to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, everywhere meeting heads of state like Jawaharlal Nehru and celebrities like Albert Schweitzer. In spite of the raging Cold War, Masha Scott also went to the Soviet Union to visit her aging parents and many siblings. After her daughters' marriages, she became more involved with her growing family, caring for four grandchildren at a time so that her daughter could go to summer school. And she herself continued studying, finally earning her master's degree from the Institute for Critical Languages in Vermont in 1966. She taught Russian at the University of Connecticut and Norwich University in Vermont, all the while working on her doctorate of philosophy in Russian language and literature at New York University. Her life changed radically in 1971 when she attended a Bible class and was born again; studying the Bible became her passion. In 1976 her husband died, but she continued her active life for nearly another quarter century. She held weekly Bible classes in her home for 25 years. She translated into Russian 12 volumes of Dr. Paul Wierwille's Biblical research, but never received permission to publish her work. She faithfully attended every year until 1988 the Rock of Ages Festival in Ohio, where her daughter Elena lived and worked, and until 1998 the Bread & Puppet Theater's Our Domestic Resurrection Circus in Vermont, where daughter Elka lives and works. "Masha loved her home, which she called ‘Paradise on Earth,' and her adopted country (she became a U.S. citizen in 1946), and ‘God Bless America' was a constant refrain," said her daughter, Elka Schumann. "But her ties to her native land and culture and her memories of her village childhood were deep and strong. Throughout the nineties, Elena interviewed her mother extensively and transcribed the memories into a 275-page book." Ms. Schumann collected scores of her mother's oft-repeated Russian proverbs and made them the theme of the 2002 Bread & Puppet calendar. In 1999 Elena Whiteside moved from Ohio to help her mother, and that quickly turned into full-time care when her mother developed congenital heart failure. Ms. Scott recovered enough to spend time every year with Elka in Vermont. The condition returned this fall and she suffered a quick decline, refusing all food, and then liquids, in the last days of her life. Maria Scott is survived by daughters Elka Schumann and her husband Peter of Glover, Vt., and Elena Whiteside of Ridgefield; by her sister Yekaterina Durseneva of Riga, Latvia; by brother-in-law Robert Nearing and his wife Jeanne of Troy, Pa.; by grandchildren Tamar, Solveig and Max Schumann and Michael Whiteside of New York City, Nicholas Whiteside of Port Washington, N.Y., Sylvia Morgan of Atlanta, Ga., and Salih and Maria Schumann of Glover, Vt., and by six great-grandchildren. According to her wishes, Masha Scott's remains were cremated. A memorial service is planned for the spring. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Advocates for the Blind Multi-Handicapped, 6240 Riverdale Ave., Bronx, N.Y. 10471, where her disabled grandson Michael is a resident.—Jack Sanders, The Ridgefield Press,