Marxist historian of Trotsky's definitive biography, who coined the 'non-Jewish Jew'
"I still believe!" — indicting the Cold War and the Vietnam War before thousands of students at the 1965 Berkeley teach-in
Born into a Polish Jewish family, a prodigy in Hasidic scripture who became an atheist in his teens. Joined the Polish Communist Party in 1927; co-founded its first anti-Stalinist group and was expelled in 1932. Exiled to London in 1939. His Stalin: A Political Biography (1949) made him a world authority. Drawing on the Harvard Trotsky Archives, his three-volume life of Trotsky is widely regarded as among the greatest political biographies. A mentor to the 1960s New Left, he died suddenly in Rome in 1967.
Career timeline
- 1927Joins the illegal Communist Party of Poland (KPP) — editor of underground press
- 1931Tours the Soviet Union — declines professorships at Moscow and Minsk Universities
- 1932Co-founds the KPP's first anti-Stalinist group — expelled for opposing the 'social fascism' line
- 1939Exiled to London — joins The Economist as Soviet and military-affairs correspondent
- 1946–1947Leaves journalism to write books full-time
- 1949Publishes Stalin: A Political Biography — becomes a leading authority on Soviet affairs
- 1954–1963Completes the Trotsky trilogy: The Prophet Armed (1954), Unarmed (1959), Outcast (1963)
- 1965Speaks at the first Berkeley Vietnam teach-in — emerges as an intellectual mentor of the New Left
- 1966–1967Delivers the G. M. Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge — posthumously published as The Unfinished Revolution
Historian of revolution’s social foundations and later memory
Born in Alexandria in 1917 and raised in Vienna and Berlin, he wrote the ‘long 19th century’ trilogy, beginning with The Age of Revolution, on the making of industrial capitalism and nationalism.
A British Marxist historian who taught at Birkbeck for many years, Hobsbawm treated the French and Industrial Revolutions together in The Age of Revolution. Echoes of the Marseillaise examined the French Revolution’s reception in later politics and historical writing. The course uses his work to consider class, social structures and changing revolutionary legacies. His interpretations must be distinguished from contemporary primary sources and from other historians’ readings.
Career timeline
- 1947Lecturer in history, Birkbeck College, London
- 1952Co-founder of the journal Past & Present
- 1970–1982Professor of history, Birkbeck College
- 1982Retired as Emeritus Professor of History, Birkbeck
- 1984–1997Visiting professor, The New School for Social Research
- 2002Appointed President of Birkbeck
Historian who interpreted the Kronstadt uprising as the last stand of Soviet democracy
One day a discussion had to be broken off at 11am; when Getzler returned five hours later, he resumed exactly where he had left off, without a single lubricating word of linkage: 'And seventhly, Lenin…'
Born in Berlin to a Polish-Jewish immigrant family, Getzler was deported by the Nazis to Poland, resettled in a Siberian gold-mining settlement by Soviet authorities, and eventually emigrated to Australia, where he earned a history degree and taught at the University of Adelaide. His 1967 biography of Yuli Martov recovered the Menshevik leader as a serious democratic alternative to Lenin, and his Kronstadt 1917–1921 (1983) used fleet muster rolls to show that 93.9% of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol crews had enlisted before 1918, proving the rebels were veteran revolutionaries and not peasant conscripts in White-Guard disguise. He became professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1971, insisted that individual and group choices shaped Soviet history, and in his later years marched against Israeli settlement policy into his eighties.
Career timeline
- 1938Deported with family to Poland by the Nazis
- 1941Resettled by Soviet authorities to a Siberian gold-mining settlement
- c. 1945Emigrated to Australia
- 1950sEarned history degree at University of Adelaide; later gained tenured post
- 1960sResearch at Hoover Institution archives, Stanford University
- 1967Published Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat
- 1971Became professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- 1983Published Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy
- 2002Published Nikolai Sukhanov: Chronicler of the Russian Revolution
The Cold War's leading conservative interpreter of Russian history who framed October as a coup
What occurred in October 1917 was a classical modern coup d'état accomplished without mass support... a surreptitious seizure of the nerve centres of the modern state, carried out under false slogans.
Polish-born American historian who became the intellectual architect of the 'totalitarian school' of Soviet studies. His magisterial two-volume history argued that the October Revolution was a coup by a tiny band of power-hungry intellectuals, not a popular uprising, and that Bolshevik rule was repressive and authoritarian from its inception. As head of Team B (1976) and Reagan's NSC Director of Soviet Affairs (1981–82), he translated his scholarship into policy, helping to shape the hard-line turn that many credit with hastening the Soviet collapse.
Career timeline
- 1958–1996Professor of Russian History, Harvard University
- 1968–1973Director, Russian Research Center, Harvard
- 1976Head of Team B, CIA competitive analysis of Soviet strategic capabilities
- 1981–1982Director of East European and Soviet Affairs, NSC, Reagan administration
- 1990Published The Russian Revolution
- 1994Published Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
- 1997Published Three Whys of the Russian Revolution
