About
Michael David-Fox is a historian of modern Russia and the USSR, whose work has ranged from cultural and political history to transnational studies and modernity theory. At the outset of his career, he became one of the first foreign researchers to work in formerly closed Communist Party archives during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He went on to become a founding editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History [https://kritika.georgetown.edu/], now based at Georgetown, a transformative journal that has helped to internationalize the field of Russian Studies. For this, he received the 2010 Distinguished Editor Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
In a series of books, nine edited volumes, twelve edited special theme issues of journals, and over forty-five articles and chapters, David-Fox has probed unexpected connections between culture and politics, institutions and mentalities, and domestic and international shifts. His latest work explores covert entanglements across borders, ideologies, and cultures. He has strong interests in transnational and comparative history and in the history of Russian-German relations, broadly conceived, as well as in the history of the Russian Revolution and Stalinism. David-Fox received his A.B. from Princeton and his PhD from Yale. He is author of Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks, 1918-1929 (1997); Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941 (2012, translated into Russian and Chinese, a Choice Outstanding Academic Title); Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union (2015, under translation into Russian, winner of the 2016 Historia Nova Prize for Best Book in Russian Intellectual and Cultural History).
David-Fox has been a Humboldt Fellow (Germany), a visiting professor at the Centre russe, EHESS (France), and was awarded the title of honorary professor from Samara State University (Russia). He has been a visiting scholar or fellow at the W. Averill Harriman Institute at Columbia University, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, the Mershon Center for Studies in International Security and Public Policy, the National Academy of Education, the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2017).
His current book project, “Smolensk under Nazi and Soviet Rule,” is a study of the exercise of power in a Russian region under Stalinism and the German occupation during WWII. Aiming squarely at the place where regional history meets the grand narrative, it cross-fertilizes three rapidly evolving fields: the study of Stalinism, German occupation on the Eastern Front during World War II, and the Holocaust. Since 2013, David-Fox has served as scholarly advisor to the International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Education
Yale University – Ph.D., History
Yale University – M.A.
Princeton University – B.A. Work Shared in CORE
Articles
- “Toward a Life Cycle Analysis of the Russian Revolution,” Kritika 18, 4 (Fall 2017): 741-83.
- “Modernost’ v Rossi ii SSSR: otsutstvuiushchaia, obshchaia, al’ternativnaia, perepletennaia?”
- “Modernity as Imaginary, Modernity as Tool: Is There a Way Forward?” [in Russian: “Modernost’ kak voobrazhaemoe, modernost’ kak instrument: Est’ li dvizhenie vpered?”]
- The Implications of Transnationalism
- Russian-‐Soviet Modernity: None, Shared, Alternative, or Entangled?
- The Leader and the System
- “The People’s War: Ordinary People and Regime Strategies in a World of Extremes,” Slavic Review 75, 3 (Fall 2016): 551-559.
Book chapters
Essays
Book reviews
Other Publications
I. Books
In progress: “Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Nazi and Soviet Rule” (under contract, Harvard University Press).
Peresekaia granitsy (Russian translation of
Crossing Borders. Moscow, NLO Press, 202
Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies, 2015. Winner, 2016 Historia Nova Prize for the Best Book on Russian Intellectual and Cultural History published in English within the preceding two years (
http://www.historianova.com/).
Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 (396 pp.). Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012. Paperback, Feb. 2014.
Vitriny Velikogo eksperimenta: Sovetskaia kul’turnaia diplomatiia i ee zapadnye gosti, 1921-1941 [Author-approved, corrected, and updated Russian translation of
Showcasing the Great Experiment, with new preface]. Moscow: NLO Publishers, Historica Rossica series, 2015. 568 pp. See:
http://www.nlobooks.ru/node/5240
Chinese translation of
Showcasing the Great Experiment.
Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks, 1918-1929. Ithaca: Cornell University Press and Studies of the Harriman Institute, 1997. ACLS Humanities E-book, 2012 (
http://www.humanitiesebook.org/intro.html). Selected for NEH/Mellon Humanities Open Book program, 2016. Cornell Paperbacks edition, December 2016.
Edited Volumes
Editor, Феномен Гулага. Интерпретации, сравнения, исторический контекст [The Gulag Phenomenon: Interpretations, Comparisons, Historical Context. Revised and updated Russian-language edition of The Soviet Gulag. 623 pp. Boston and St. Petersburg: Academic Studies Press, Contemporary Western Rusistika (Современная западная русистика) series, 2021. Author of “От изоляции к сопоставлению: обновленная история ГУЛАГа” (pp. 9-49)
“Nachal’nik goroda: B. G. Men’shagin v istoricheskom kontekste” [City Boss: B. G. Men’shagina in Historical Context], in Boris Men’shagin: Vospominaniia. Dokumenty. Pis’ma [Boris Men’shagin: Recollections. Documents. Letters], ed. Pavel Polian et al. (member of redkollekiia). (St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2019): 173-214.
- Editor, The Soviet Gulag: Evidence, Interpretation, and Comparison. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, Russian and East European Studies and Kritika Historical Studies, 2016. 432 pp. Author of introduction, “From Bounded to Juxtapositional: New Histories of the Gulag” (pp. 1-24).
- Co-editor with Peter Holquist and Alexander Martin, The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014). Pitt Russian and East European Studies and Kritika Historical Studies. Author of Preface, “The Holocaust as a Part of Soviet History.”
- Co-editor with Peter Holquist and Alexander Martin, Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). Russian and East European Studies and Kritika Historical Studies. Author of introduction, “Entangled Histories in the Age of Extremes.”
- Co-editor with Peter Holquist and Alexander Martin, Orientalism and Empire in Russia (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2006), Kritika Historical Studies. Author of Introduction: “Russia’s Orient, Russia’s West.”
- Co-editor with Peter Holquist and Marshall Poe, After the Fall: Essays on Russian and Soviet Historiography after Communism (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2004), Kritika Historical Studies. Author of introduction and afterword.
- Co-editor with Peter Holquist and Marshall Poe, The Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History, Kritika Historical Studies (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2003). Co-author of introduction and author of commentary piece, “Whither Resistance?”
- Editor, Amerikanskaia rusistika: Sovetskii period [American Russian Studies: The Soviet Period].Samara: Izdatel’stvo Samarskii Universitet [Samara University Press, Russia], 2001. 375 pp. Paperback edition, 2001. Author of chap. 1 [see Articles and Book Chapters # 15 below]
- Editor, Amerikanskaia rusistika: Imperatorskii period [American Russian Studies: The Imperial Period]. Samara: Izdatel’stvo Samarskii Universitet [Samara University Press, Russia], 2000. 331 pp. Author of Chap. 1 [see Articles and Book Chapters # 14 below]
- Co-editor with György Péteri, Academia in Upheaval: Origins, Transfers, and Transformations of the Communist Academic Regime in Russia and East Central Europe. Co-author of introduction (pp. 3-38) and chapter 3 [see Articles and Book Chapters #13 below] Westport, CT and London: Bergin & Garvey (Greenwood Publishing Group), 2000. 352 pp. Paperback edition: Information Age Publishing, 2007.
III. Edited Journal Special Theme Issues
- Special Section Guest Editor, “Occupations and Liberations in World War II,” five-article cluster, Slavic Review 75, 3 (Fall 2016).
- “The Soviet Gulag: New Research and New Interpretations,” Kritika 16, 3 (2015). Author of introduction, “What Was the Gulag?” (pp. 469-75).
- “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Soviet Jewry on the Eastern Front,” Kritika 15, 3 (2014). Author of introduction, “Soviet Jewry and Soviet History in the Time of War and Holocaust” (pp. 471-76).
- “Enmity and Fascination: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, 3 (summer 2009). Author of introduction, “Entangled Histories in the Age of Extremes” (pp. 415-22).
- “Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,” Kritika 9, 4 (2008). Author of introduction, “Passing through the Iron Curtain” (pp. 703-709).
- “Circulation of Knowledge and the Human Sciences in Russia,” Kritika 9, 1 (Winter 2008). Author of introduction, “Journeés d’études internationales” (pp. 1-7).
- “Subjecthood and Citizenship From Alexander II to Brezhnev,” Kritika 7, 3 (Summer 2006).
- “The New Political History,” Kritika 5, 1 (Winter 2004). Co-author of introduction, “New Wine in New Bottles?” (pp 1-6)
- Political Violence in Russia and the Soviet Union” Kritika 4, 3 (Summer 2003). Author of introduction, “Violence, ‘Political’ Violence, and Terror in Russian History” (pp 485-90)
- “Negotiating Cultural Upheavals: Cultural Politics and Memory in 20th-Century Russia,” Kritika 2, 3 (Summer 2001). Author of commentary, “Cultural Memory in the Century of Upheaval: Big Pictures and Snapshots” (pp 601-613).
- “The State of the Field: Russian History Ten Years After the Fall,” Kritika 2, 2 (Spring 2001). Author of introduction, “A Remarkable Decade” (pp 229-32).
- “Resistance to Authority in Russia and the Soviet Union,” Kritika 1, 1 (Winter 2000). Author of commentary, “Whither Resistance?” (pp 161-66).
Projects
— Co-Editor, “The Political Police in the USSR and Eastern Europe: New Archival Investigations,” in progress, under contract, Pittsburgh University Press, Kritika Historical Studies.
–“Re-Reading Fainsod in Smolensk,” forthcoming, Kritika, 2021.
–“Sex and Civilization on the Eastern Front: Comrade Liusia and the Komsomol Underground in Occupied Smolensk,” under consideration for special theme issue of Russian Review.
