1954–
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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
From Aviation Industry History to Secret Policy: The Making of an Archival Historian
Kostyrchenko's research began not with the Jewish question but with the Soviet aviation industry. In 1988 he defended a candidate's dissertation on the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry, and he worked at the Ministry of Aviation Industry and at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee. After 1991 he worked at the Russian Center for Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History, making archival access the foundation of his research; he is currently a senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
His first book, In the Clutches of the Red Pharaoh (1994), examined the political persecution of Jews in the last Stalinist decade and appeared in English translation in 1995. Stalin's Secret Policy: Power and Antisemitism followed in 2001, with a revised and expanded edition in 2003; the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia awarded him the title and prize 'Man of the Year 5762' for it. In 2005, under the general editorship of Academician A. N. Yakovlev, he compiled the documentary volume in the series Russia. The 20th Century. Documents, placing party and state records alongside societal reactions and thereby broadening the documentary base for demonstrating state antisemitism. In 2008 he defended his doctoral dissertation on the Soviet political leadership and the Jewish intelligentsia, 1936-1953, concluding this phase of his research.
Kostyrchenko did not stop at the Stalin era. With Khrushchev's Secret Policy: Power, the Intelligentsia, and the Jewish Question (2012), a new edition of Stalin's Secret Policy (2015), and Secret Policy: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev (2019), he extended the 'secret policy' series, narrating Soviet state policy toward Jews as a long-term structure running from the Stalin era to the Gorbachev era. This sustained project established his scholarly position as a reconstruction of state policy history as a whole rather than of a single episode.