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…
20 February 2020
By sheer coincidence I came across reference to the name of a Soviet woman about whom I know very little, but because today is the anniversary of her death (on 20 February 2001, at the age of 90)…
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…
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…
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…
11 August 2017
Rada Nikitichna Adzhubei, daughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, died in a hospital in Moscow a year ago on 11 August 2016. Right up to her final illness, Rada Nikitichna continued to live in the spacious apartment in…
11 July 2017
Dissident poet, Irina Ratushinskaya died in Moscow on 5 July 2017, aged just 63. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1954, Ratushinskaya appears to have had a pretty standard Soviet upbringing. She was awarded a degree in physics in…
26 June 2017
I’m very pleased to be able to announce that the university’s Being Human Research Priority Area has awarded me a period of sabbatical leave for semester one 2017/18. The main focus of my work during this period will…
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….