A historian who traced revolutionary pluralism and the making of Stalinism
Against models of communism as an immutable system, Daniels argued that the movement was an evolutionary product of circumstances.
Robert Vincent Daniels was an American historian and educator who traced competing possibilities within the Russian Revolution and Soviet politics. His landmark book The Conscience of the Revolution examined early Communist pluralism, resisting the idea that Stalin’s collectivization and concentration of power were inevitable outcomes of the revolution. Daniels distinguished the Opposition’s industrialization program from Stalin’s violent implementation, while cautioning against exaggerating foreign-policy differences between the factions. His later scholarship and textbooks brought debates in Soviet history to generations of students.
Career Timeline
- 1926–1946Born; served in the U.S. Navy and earned an A.B. in economics from Harvard
- 1950Earned a Harvard Ph.D. in history
- 1950년대Taught at Bennington College and Indiana University
- 1956–1988Professor of history at the University of Vermont
- 1960Published The Conscience of the Revolution
- 1967Published Red October
- 1973–1982Democratic member of the Vermont State Senate
- 1992President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies