Historian who interpreted the Kronstadt uprising as the last stand of Soviet democracy
One day a discussion had to be broken off at 11am; when Getzler returned five hours later, he resumed exactly where he had left off, without a single lubricating word of linkage: 'And seventhly, Lenin…'
Born in Berlin to a Polish-Jewish immigrant family, Getzler was deported by the Nazis to Poland, resettled in a Siberian gold-mining settlement by Soviet authorities, and eventually emigrated to Australia, where he earned a history degree and taught at the University of Adelaide. His 1967 biography of Yuli Martov recovered the Menshevik leader as a serious democratic alternative to Lenin, and his Kronstadt 1917–1921 (1983) used fleet muster rolls to show that 93.9% of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol crews had enlisted before 1918, proving the rebels were veteran revolutionaries and not peasant conscripts in White-Guard disguise. He became professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1971, insisted that individual and group choices shaped Soviet history, and in his later years marched against Israeli settlement policy into his eighties.
Career Timeline
- 1938Deported with family to Poland by the Nazis
- 1941Resettled by Soviet authorities to a Siberian gold-mining settlement
- ~1945Emigrated to Australia
- ~1950sEarned history degree at University of Adelaide; later gained tenured post
- ~1960sResearch at Hoover Institution archives, Stanford University
- 1967Published Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat
- 1971Became professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- 1983Published Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy
- 2002Published Nikolai Sukhanov: Chronicler of the Russian Revolution