[This is the final part of a four-part series of posts concerning "The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Russian History in America." For background information on this series, click here. Previous installments: Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Cross-posted from The Russian Front.]
What is to be Done?
For scholars who have themselves been forced [...]

[This is the third of a four-part series of posts concerning "The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Russian History in America." For background information on this series, click here. Previous installments: Part One and Part Two. Cross-posted from The Russian Front.]
Revenge of the Nationalities?
Despite the impressive work being done in the broad subfields of [...]

[This is the second of a four-part series of posts concerning "The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Russian History in America." For background information on this series, click here. For Part One, here. Cross-posted from The Russian Front.]
From under the rubble
Although the years that immediately followed the demise of the Soviet system were accompanied [...]

[This is the first of a four-part series of posts concerning "The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Russian History in America." For background information on this series, click here. Cross-posted from The Russian Front.]
A brief history of Russian history, 1945-1991

Although the scholarly study of Russia’s past may be said to have begun as early [...]

[Cross-posted from The Russian Front]
About this time last year, The Journal of the Historical Society published an essay of mine devoted to recent trends in the field of Russian history. Although the article (”Scholarship at the Crossroads: The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Russian History in America”) was commissioned by the Journal’s editor, George [...]

Like most institutions associated with academia, the academic conference is a curious thing. It’s a combination of educational seminar, professional retreat, class reunion, and subsidized junket. It’s also an integral (and unavoidable) part of being professional scholar.
I attended my first conference as an undergraduate in the spring of 1988. It was a meeting held [...]

Although the academic field of Russian history does not lack for talented and inventive scholars, as a general rule, there aren’t too many professional historians who can produce a book that combines innovative research with an engaging and entertaining narrative.
One of the few exceptions to the rule is Catherine Merridale, Professor of Contemporary History at [...]

For the last two weeks, H-Russia (a list serv/discussion board catering largely to academics and graduate students) has hosted a lively debate regarding utility of the term “backwardness” in studying and describing the history of Russia. The discussion emerged out of a previous thread devoted to foreign travelers’ accounts of Russia, many of which (like [...]