1967–
American historian who argued the USSR continued the imperial ethnographic practices of the tsarist state
Her continuity thesis, that tsarist-era ethnographers practically designed the Bolshevik state's territorial divisions and population categories, reshaped the landscape of post-Soviet nationality studies.
An American historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In her 2005 book Empire of Nations, she advanced a continuity thesis: former imperial ethnographers provided the Bolsheviks with knowledge that shaped the USSR's territorial borders and nationality policies, meaning the Soviet state did not break with imperial ethnographic practices but inherited them. The book won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize and stands alongside Terry Martin's The Affirmative Action Empire, which stresses the novelty of Soviet nationality policy, as one of the two poles of post-1991 scholarship on Soviet nations.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1998Ph.D. in History, Princeton University
- 1998–현재Professor of History, University of Wisconsin–Madison
- 2005Empire of Nations published (Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, Wayne S. Vucinich Prize)
- 2020Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg published (ASIL Certificate of Merit)
Related historical events
The Nuremberg IMT and the Soviet Role
In her second book, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020), Hirsch shifted her focus from nationality policy to international law and the postwar order. The book is described as the first comprehensive study of the part the Soviet delegation played in the International Military Tribunal (IMT); reviews single out her recovery of the Soviet legal contribution that had been largely absent from the scholarship.
Her central claim is that without the Soviets Nuremberg would never have taken place. Soviet jurists conceived of the legal framework that treated aggressive war as an international crime, giving the trials their legal basis. She identifies Aron Trainin as its key architect, crediting him with first formulating the concept of "crimes against peace." The Soviet Union had borne the brunt of the fighting against Germany, and its suffering gave it moral authority.
At the same time, Hirsch does not avert her eyes from the contradictions. Stalin tried to steer the tribunal along the lines of the Moscow Trials of the 1930s, and key members of the Soviet delegation, including the Soviet judge and chief prosecutor, had played critical roles in those show trials. The Soviets sought to pin the Katyn massacre on the Nazis, but the German defense exposed it as a Soviet crime in open court, leaving the delegation badly exposed. Hirsch frames Nuremberg as both the final battle of World War II and the first battle of the Cold War, and draws two uncomfortable conclusions: that illiberal authoritarian states have at times positively shaped international law, and that international justice is an inherently political process.
The research rests on wide-ranging archival collections in Russia, the United States, and England. The book won a Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law (ASIL) in 2021 for "a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship," and was translated into Russian in 2023.