Episode 51: Reflections on Soviet History with Sheila Fitzpatrick

Since the 1970s, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick has made invaluable contributions to our understanding of the Soviet Union. As a key figure in the "revisionist school" of Soviet history, Fitzpatrick along with other historians opposed entrenched Cold War era narratives about the USSR including (but not limited to) the "totalitarian thesis". Fitzpatrick in particular added texture and complexity in her studies of the Soviet Union by focusing on social history, perspectives "from below" and daily life as well as social and economic advancement & upward mobility during Stalinism. On today's episode, we welcome Sheila Fitzpatrick on as a guest to reflect on the development of Soviet history since the 1970s, her work and what the Soviet past looks like today.

Sheila Fitzpatrick is a historian of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. Her books The Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-31 (1978), Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-34 (1979) and The Russian Revolution (1982) were foundational to the field of Soviet social history. She taught for many years at the University of Chicago, before returning to Australia, the country of her birth. Her book, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration was published by Black, Inc., Melbourne, in 2021; followed by The Shortest History of the Soviet Union in 2022. She is currently working on a monograph, Displacement: Repatriation and Resettlement of Russian and Soviet Displaced Persons after the Second World War, and a biography of Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, under contract to Princeton University Press. She is currently a professor at the Australian Catholic University.