The archival historian of Stalin's state antisemitism who argued the 1953 deportation was a myth
Stalin's Jewish deportation became a kind of Loch Ness Monster: many claimed to have seen it, but no one has ever presented a single piece of incontrovertible evidence.
Russia's leading historian of the Stalin era, who set the scholarly standard through his archival excavation of Soviet state antisemitism. His books In the Clutches of the Red Pharaoh (1994) and Stalin's Secret Policy: Power and Antisemitism (2001) are the monumental reference works that documented the full scope of late-Stalinist persecution of Jews, including the Doctors' Plot and the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. In his 2003 article 'Deportation: A Mystification,' he provoked fierce debate by arguing the widely accepted claim that Stalin planned a mass deportation of Jews was like the Loch Ness Monster: a story many claimed to have seen but for which no archival evidence existed, a position that now stands as the central counterpoint to Brent and Naumov's Stalin's Last Crime.
Career Timeline
- 1988Defended candidate's dissertation on the People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry (1939–1945)
- 1994Published In the Clutches of the Red Pharaoh
- 2001Published Stalin's Secret Policy: Power and Antisemitism (revised ed. 2003)
- 2003Named 'Man of the Year 5762' by Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia
- 2008Defended doctoral dissertation on Soviet political leadership and the Jewish intelligentsia (1936–1953)
- 2015Published new edition of Stalin's Secret Policy (2 vols, 1,176 pp.)
- 현재Leading researcher, Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences