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.'
Activities and affiliations
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
- 1956–1965Research fellow, lecturer, senior lecturer, Birmingham
- 1963–1979Founding director, CREES, University of Birmingham
- 1965–1988Professor of Soviet Economic Studies, Birmingham
- 1988Retired; Emeritus Professor
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet Transformationco-author of the famine death-toll reassessmentWith Wheatcroft he used post-Soviet archives to establish the famine death toll at 5.5 to 6.5 million and argued it resulted from procurement-first policy and harvest failure, not planned genocide.
- 1932–1933The Holodomor and the Collectivisation FamineHistorian of the 1932–1933 famineIn The Years of Hunger, he estimated deaths in the 1932–1933 famine and explained its causes.
Research on Soviet Industrialisation and Evidence-Based History
After co-authoring a study with E. H. Carr on the origins of the Soviet planning system, Davies continued the project beyond Carr’s account, which ended in the late 1920s, with a series on the Soviet economy in the 1930s. Published from 1980 to 2018, its seven volumes examined agricultural collectivisation, forced industrialisation, famine, purges, and preparations for war. Davies also led a comparative study of Soviet industrial technology and its Western counterparts, edited collections of economic statistics and documentary records, and analysed changes in Soviet historical writing during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras.
Davies’s interpretation treated leaders’ ideas and policies as consequential without assuming that they predetermined the outcome. He described the economic system of the early Bolshevik decades as emerging through experimentation and adaptation, alternating between radical initiatives and pragmatic restraints. His research highlighted the social costs of forced-march development, its unintended outcomes, and the damage caused when Stalin’s leadership refused to acknowledge or adapt to them. In the final volume of the series, published in 2018, he said that he had revised his early conception of the Soviet system as a “new civilisation.” His work maintained the principle that detailed historical evidence should take precedence over preconceived ideas.