A historian who wove revolutionary social history into human experience
He said he tried to present the revolution not as a march of abstract social forces, but as a human event of complicated individual tragedies.
Orlando Figes is a British historian of Russia who interprets revolution and Soviet society through both social history and individual experience. His major work, A People's Tragedy, covers 1891 to 1924 and makes the contingency of 1917, popular action, and the formation of Bolshevik power part of a single narrative. It has been placed between revisionist social history and the totalitarian school, while also being criticised for its bleak reading of revolution and violence. In The Whisperers, he used oral testimony and family archives to reconstruct private life under Stalinism.
Career Timeline
- 1959Born in London
- 1982Graduated in history from the University of Cambridge
- 1987Received a PhD from the University of Cambridge
- 1989Published Peasant Russia, Civil War
- 1996Published A People's Tragedy
- 1999Became professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London
- 2007Published The Whisperers
- 2022Retired from Birkbeck as emeritus professor