23 April 2021
On what would have been his 96th birthday, I offer this tribute to RW [Bob] Davies, who died last week. For those of you who have studied Soviet history, you will be aware of the important impact that…
10 December 2018
I was greatly saddened to wake this morning to the news of the death of Moscow-based human rights activist Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alekseeva on 8 December 2018 at the age of 91. I was fortunate to be able to…
13 November 2018
On 7 November, I was privileged to be part of the presentation panel at the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES), The University of Birmingham, to mark the recent publication of the seventh and final volume…
24 October 2017
‘Gulag Actress’ Tamara Petkevich died recently in St Petersburg at the age of 97. Here is an abridged version of the review of her Memoir that I wrote when it was published in English in 2010. This volume…
18 October 2017
I posted on our Facebook page in September that I had a book due to come out very soon, and now it’s actually here! Women’s Experiences of Repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a co-authored…
4 September 2017
Dr Slater is joining the History team at the University of Gloucestershire as part-time lecturer in Russian and Soviet history for semester 1, replacing Prof. Melanie Ilic who will be on a research sabbatical. I came to Russian…
15 August 2017
The Great Terror of 1936 to 1938 left an indelible mark on Soviet politics and Stalinist society. In addition to the three major show trials in Moscow, purges and arrests took place across the country. Initially, these were…
25 November 2016
Stepan Ivanovich Karagodin: Lost and Found An intriguing story has emerged recently in the Russian press and it’s now being picked up by some of the British media. It touches on some interesting questions relating to historical responsibility,…
31 October 2016
Crowds gathered in Moscow and in other Russian cities over the weekend to remember those who died as a result of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and 1940s. The commemoration in Moscow took place in Lubyanka Square, where…
5 October 2016
‘We are a generation not from this universe’ One of the few remaining members of the infamous ‘night witches’, the female pilots who flew in the Soviet front line during World War Two, died on 22 September 2016….