Dallin was also the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History at Stanford University, and served as Director for the Center for Russian and East European Studies.
[10] Marshall D. Shulman, who also served as director of the Russian Institute, later noted Dallin's objectivity, saying, "In a field riven by political controversy, he was universally respected as a voice of common sense and scholarly detachment rooted in a solid historical backing.
"[1] In 1970, Dallin and his family left for the West Coast and he became a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley.
[4] There Dallin became the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and served as Director for the Center for Russian and East European Studies.
[10] His first marriage ended in divorce and Dallin married Gail W. Lapidus, a senior fellow at Stanford's Institute for International Studies and a professor of political science.
[4] Dallin was frequently present in open-to-the-public Center for Russian and East European Studies seminars on campus where his expertise and talent were shared.
[6] He was a long-time member of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and he helped re-energize the organization by bringing its headquarters to Stanford and served as its president from 1984 to 1985.
[1] Holloway, who succeeded to the Spruance chair, subsequently said that Dallin was "the model scholar-organizer"[4] and that he "had a profound and beneficial influence on the field of Soviet and East European studies.
For him the study of the Soviet Union was not a question of confirming an already held point of view but rather a matter of seeking to understand a complex and changing reality.