About
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Vyatka State
University in Kirov, Russia, where I have been teaching since 2012. I completed my PhD in History at the University of Pittsburgh in 2014. My research focuses on the Stalinist 1930’s. My first publication, “Personal and Political: A Microhistory of the “Red Column” Collective Farm, 1935-36,” was published in January 2016 in The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies. In addition to this monograph, my book,
Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution, was published in November 2017 by Routledge. The book uses a regional focus to examine the discourse between the central state leadership and citizens about the new Soviet social contract, the 1936 Soviet Constitution. My recently published article,
Moscow is Far Away: Peasant Communal Traditions in the Expulsion of Collective Farm Members in the Vyatka–Kirov Region 1932–1939, looks at how expulsion was used by collective farms to control the behavior of their members, occasionally leading to clashes with the state over what values were important
Education
Ph.D., Department of History, University of Pittsburgh, 2014
Regional Focus: Russian and Modern European History
Thematic Focus: Text & Context
Dissertation: “Speaking Out: The Public Discussion of the 1936 Constitution and the Practice of Soviet Democracy”
Certificate in Russian Studies, Russian and Eastern European Studies Center,
University of Pittsburgh, 2014
M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2009
Thesis – “Voices from the Village: Sel’kory, Stengazety and Popular Discussion of the Draft Constitution, June – December 1936”
B.A., History, Shepherd University, Summa Cum Laude, 2006 Work Shared in CORE
Monographs
Other Publications
Moscow is Far Away: Peasant Communal Traditions in the Expulsion of Collective Farm Members in the Vyatka–Kirov Region 1932–1939, Europe-Asia Studies, 2021
Review of
Corn Crusade: Khrushchev’s Farming Revolution in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union, by Aaron Hale-Dorrell,
The English Historical Review, Volume 135, Issue 572, February 2020, 248–250
Review of Eric Lee,
The Experiment. Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918–1921,
Europe-Asia Studies, 2018, vol. 70, issue 7, 1174-1175
Review of Daniel Stotland, ‘
Purity and Compromise in the Soviet Party-State: The Struggle for the Soul of the Party, 1941-1952,’
The Russian Review, 77, 2018, 672–674
Interview about Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution on the New Books Network
Review of Julia L. Mickenberg, ‘American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Dream’. EuropeNow Vol. 13 ( December 2017)
Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution, (Routledge: November 2017)
“‘Enemies of the People’ Under the Soviets. A History of Repression and its Consequences”- Review Europe-Asia Studies, 69(7), pp. 1132–1133
“Personal and Political: A Microhistory of the “Red Column” Collective Farm, 1935-36,” The Carl Beck Papers (number 2404), 2016 Projects
Host for the New Books Network Russian an Eurasian Studies Channel Oct 2017- Present
Memberships
New Books Network
