Marxist historian of Trotsky's definitive biography, who coined the 'non-Jewish Jew'
"I still believe!" — indicting the Cold War and the Vietnam War before thousands of students at the 1965 Berkeley teach-in
Born into a Polish Jewish family, a prodigy in Hasidic scripture who became an atheist in his teens. Joined the Polish Communist Party in 1927; co-founded its first anti-Stalinist group and was expelled in 1932. Exiled to London in 1939. His Stalin: A Political Biography (1949) made him a world authority. Drawing on the Harvard Trotsky Archives, his three-volume life of Trotsky is widely regarded as among the greatest political biographies. A mentor to the 1960s New Left, he died suddenly in Rome in 1967.
Career timeline
1927Joins the illegal Communist Party of Poland (KPP) — editor of underground press
1931Tours the Soviet Union — declines professorships at Moscow and Minsk Universities
1932Co-founds the KPP's first anti-Stalinist group — expelled for opposing the 'social fascism' line
1939Exiled to London — joins The Economist as Soviet and military-affairs correspondent
1946–1947Leaves journalism to write books full-time
1949Publishes Stalin: A Political Biography — becomes a leading authority on Soviet affairs
1954–1963Completes the Trotsky trilogy: The Prophet Armed (1954), Unarmed (1959), Outcast (1963)
1965Speaks at the first Berkeley Vietnam teach-in — emerges as an intellectual mentor of the New Left
1966–1967Delivers the G. M. Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge — posthumously published as The Unfinished Revolution
Historian of revolution’s social foundations and later memory
Born in Alexandria in 1917 and raised in Vienna and Berlin, he wrote the ‘long 19th century’ trilogy, beginning with The Age of Revolution, on the making of industrial capitalism and nationalism.
A British Marxist historian who taught at Birkbeck for many years, Hobsbawm treated the French and Industrial Revolutions together in The Age of Revolution. Echoes of the Marseillaise examined the French Revolution’s reception in later politics and historical writing. The course uses his work to consider class, social structures and changing revolutionary legacies. His interpretations must be distinguished from contemporary primary sources and from other historians’ readings.
Career timeline
1947Lecturer in history, Birkbeck College, London
1952Co-founder of the journal Past & Present
1970–1982Professor of history, Birkbeck College
1982Retired as Emeritus Professor of History, Birkbeck
1984–1997Visiting professor, The New School for Social Research
The British economic historian who built the seven-volume chronicle of Soviet industrialisation
In his final volume he wrote: "While my view of Soviet history has changed… when the details of history are in conflict with preconceived ideas, the latter should give way… I remain on the Left, believing… that a better organization of society is possible."
A British economic historian. He co-authored Foundations of a Planned Economy with E. H. Carr and carried Carr's work forward into the 1930s, completing the seven-volume The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia. In The Years of Hunger (2004), co-authored with Stephen Wheatcroft, he used post-Soviet archives to estimate famine deaths at 5.5–6.5 million and argued the famine was not a planned genocide but the result of procurement-first policy, harvest failure, and belated leadership response. A member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in his youth, he left after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and remained on the Left, holding that 'a better organization of society is possible.'
Career timeline
1943–1946RAF radio communications service
1950BA, SSEES, University of London
1954PhD, University of Birmingham (Soviet budgetary system)
1954–1956Assistant lecturer, Institute of Soviet Studies, Glasgow
A historian who reconstructed the Cold War’s hidden record
As his father's personal secretary, he recorded the Cuban negotiations, and the documents he later donated revealed that tactical nuclear weapons remained in Cuba after the missile withdrawal.
Sergo Mikoyan was a Soviet and Russian historian of Latin America and Soviet foreign policy, as well as the son of Anastas Mikoyan. His experience accompanying his father to Cuba in 1962, together with his personal records, helped reveal that Soviet tactical nuclear weapons remained on the island after the public missile withdrawal and that the negotiations deepened the rift with the Cuban leadership. As editor of the journal Latin America, he helped shape the field and later joined collaborative Soviet-American research on the Cold War.
Career timeline
1952Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations
1956Completed postgraduate study at the same institute
1957–1960Academic editor of World Economy and International Relations
1960–1990Researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations
1962Accompanied Anastas Mikoyan during the Cuban negotiations
1970–1990Editor-in-chief of the monthly journal Latin America
1990sCollaborated with U.S. universities and archival projects
In Revolution from Above, Kotz argued that the USSR's ruling party-state elite itself dismantled the Soviet system in pursuit of greater wealth and power.
David M. Kotz is an American economist whose work examines institutional change and political economy. With Fred Weir, he interpreted the Soviet demise not simply as economic collapse and popular revolt, but as a process in which the party-state elite dismantled the system in pursuit of greater wealth and power. Their book Revolution from Above links Soviet stagnation, perestroika, the formation of a pro-capitalist coalition, and Russia's subsequent political economy.
Career timeline
1978Coauthor of Bank Control of Large Corporations in the U.S.
1994Coeditor of Social Structures of Accumulation
1997Published Revolution from Above with Fred Weir
2007Published Russia's Path from Gorbachev to Putin with Fred Weir
2015Published The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism
2021Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
A historian of the 1950s-60s USSR and the Russian church schism
Pyzhikov noted that the Twenty-Second Congress resolution gave almost four times as much space to the Anti-Party Group as to criticism of Stalin's personality cult.
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Pyzhikov (27 November 1965, Ramenskoye, Moscow Oblast - night of 16-17 September 2019, Moscow) was a Russian historian and state official who died of a pulmonary embolism. He defended his candidate dissertation in 1998 and his doctoral dissertation in 1999, and was Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation in 2003-2004. In his final years he became widely known for research on the 17th-century schism of the Russian Church and the Old Believers; his argument that the Old Believers played an important role in the revolutionary events of the early 20th century and in the formation of the Soviet order divided Old Believer circles. He also provoked controversy with conspiratorial civilizational claims such as denying the reality of the Tatar-Mongol yoke.
Career timeline
1989Graduated from the history faculty of the Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute
1989–Junior researcher in the CPSU-history department of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee
1998Earned a Candidate of Historical Sciences degree for research on Soviet society in 1953–1964
1999Earned a Doctor of Historical Sciences degree for research on political reform in the Soviet Union in the 1950s–1960s
2000Aide to the Russian minister for communications and informatization
2000–2003Aide to the Chairman of the Russian Government
2003.06.05–2004.06.18Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, handling quality control of education and state certification of institutions
2000s–Professor of contemporary Russian history at the Institute of History and Politics of Moscow State Pedagogical University
2001Awarded the academic title of professor
2013Received the Yegor Gaidar Prize in history for the monograph 'Грани русского раскола'
