Khlevniuk, Oleg V. 1959–

(O.V. Khlevniuk, Oleg Khlevniuk, Oleg Vital'evich Khlevniuk, Oleg Khlevnyuk)

PERSONAL:

Born July 7, 1959, in Vinnitsa, Ukraine; son of Vitalii and Gertruda Khlevniuk; married Ekaterina Sheveleva; children: Dariya (daughter). Ethnicity: "Ukrainian." Education: Vinnitsa Institute, undergraduate degree, 1980; U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Ph.D., 1985; Higher Education Committee of Russian Federation, D.Soc.Sci., 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Moscow, Russia. Office—State Archive of the Russian Federation, B. Pirogovskaia 17, Moscow 119992, Russia.

CAREER:

Affiliated with U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Institute of History of the U.S.S.R., 1985-87; Kommunist/Svobodnaia mysl' (journal), Moscow, Russia, editorial assistant, 1987-96; State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow, senior researcher, 1996—. Military service: Soviet Army, 1981-83.

MEMBER:

Royal Historical Society (corresponding fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Alexander Nove Prize (with Yoram Gorlizki), British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, 2004, for Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION; UNDER NAME O.V. KHLEVNIUK, EXCEPT AS NOTED

(With V.A. Kozlov) Nachinaetsia s cheloveka: Chelovecheskii faktor v sotsialisticheskom stroitel'stve: Itogi i uroki 30-kh godov, Izd-vo polit. lit-ry (Moscow, Soviet Union), 1988.

(With V.A. Kozlov, G.A. Bordiugov, and E.Y. Zubkova) Istoricheskii opyt i perestroika: Chelovecheskii faktor v sotsial'no-ekonomicheskom razvitii SSSR, Mysl' (Moscow, Soviet Union), 1989.

(With S.S. Khizhniakov) XVIII partkonferentsiia: Vremia, problemy, resheniia, Izd-vo polit. lit-ry (Moscow, Soviet Union), 1990.

1937-i: Stalin, NKVD i sovetskoe obshchestvo, Izd-vo "Respublika" (Moscow, Russia), 1992.

Stalin i Ordzhonikidze: Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody, Izdatel'skii tsentre "Rossiia molodaia" (Moscow, Russia), 1993, translation by David J. Nordlander published under name Oleg V. Khlevniuk as In Stalin's Shadow: The Career of "Sergo" Ordzhonikidze, edited with introduction by Donald J. Raleigh with the assistance of Kathy S. Transchel, M.E. Sharpe (Armonk, NY), 1995.

(Editor) Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody: Sbornik dokumentov ("Dokumenty sovetskii istorii" series), "Airo-XX" (Moscow, Russia), 1995.

(Editor, with Lars T. Lih and Oleg V. Naumov) Pis'ma I.V. Stalina V.M. Molotovu, 1925-1936 gg., Rossiia molodaia (Moscow, Russia), 1995, translation by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick published under name Oleg V. Khlevniuk as Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, foreword by Robert C. Tucker, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1995.

Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody, Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 1996.

(Editor, with A.V. Kvashonkin, L.P. Kosheleva, and L.A. Rogovaia) Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska, 1912-1927 ("Dokumenty sovetskii istorii" series), Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 1996.

(Editor, with V.P. Danilov and A.IU. Vatlin) Kak lomali NEĖP: Stenogrammy plenumov TSK VKP(b) 1928-1929 gg., five volumes, Mezhdunar. fond. "Demokratiia": Izd-vo "Materik" (Moscow, Russia), 2000.

(Editor, with G.Sh. Sagatelian and B.S. Ilizarov) Stalin, stalinizm, sovetskoe obshchestvo: Sbornik statei, In-t rossiiskoi (Moscow, Russia), 2000.

(Editor, with R.W. Davies and E.A. Rees) Stalin i Kaganovich: Perepiska 1931-1936 gg., Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 2001, translation by Steven Shabad published under name Oleg V. Khlevniuk as The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2003.

(Editor, with A.IA. Livshin and I.B. Orlov) Pis'ma vo vlast', 1928-1939: Zaiavleniia, zhaloby, donosy,pis'ma v gosudarstvennye struktury i sovetskim vozhdiam ("Dokumenty sovetskii istorii" series), Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 2002.

(Chief editor) Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, 1945-1953 ("Dokumenty sovetskii istorii" series), Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 2002.

(Under name Oleg V. Khlevniuk) The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, translation by Vadim A. Staklo with editorial assistance and commentary by David J. Nordlander, foreword by Robert Conquest, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

(Under name Oleg Khlevniuk, with Yoram Gorlizki) Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

(Editor, with others) The History of Stalin's Gulag: Collected Documents, seven volumes, Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 2004.

(Editor, with L.I. Borodkin and P. Gregori) Gulag: Ėkonomika prinuditel'nogo truda (title means "Gulag: Economics of Forced Labor"), Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 2005.

(Editor, with others) Stenograms of the TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b) Politburo Meetings, 1923-1938, three volumes, Rosspėn (Moscow, Russia), 2007.

Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle, translation by Nora Seligman Fvorov, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2008.

Contributor to books, including Soviet History, 1917-53: Essays in Honour of R.W. Davies, edited by Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie, and E.A. Rees, St. Martin's Press, 1995; Central-Local Relations in the Stalinist State, 1928-1941, edited by E.A. Rees, 2002; Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union, edited by B. McLoughlin and K. McDermott, 2003; The Nature of Stalin's Dictatorship: The Politburo, 1924-1953, edited by E.A. Rees, 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including Europe-Asia Studies and Cahiers du monde russe. Member of editorial boards of Cahiers du monde russe, Kritika, and Slavonica. Author's works have been translated into French, German, Italian, and Japanese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Regarded as a leading authority on the history of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Oleg V. Khlevniuk has written, edited, and contributed to a number of books on Stalin, his contemporaries, and his administration. His position as senior researcher of the State Archive of the Russian Federation has given him unprecedented access to source documents kept strictly secret until the fall of Communism in 1991, and he has done much to study the materials and make them available to other scholars. As a measure of his stature, Terry Martin in Journal of Cold War Studies stated that "the best essay in any collection on Soviet politics is typically the one written by Oleg Khlevniuk."

Khlevniuk's 1993 book Stalin i Ordzhonikidze: Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody, published in English in 1995 as In Stalin's Shadow: The Career of "Sergo" Ordzhonikidze, is "a detailed and well-grounded portrait" of Stalin's Commissar of Soviet Heavy Industry, as assessed by Francesco Benvenuti in Europe-Asia Studies. Based largely on research conducted before Soviet archives were opened, the book represents to Benvenuti "a significant synthesis and an updating of [Khlevniuk's] entire scholarship so far." Khlevniuk depicts Ordzhonikidze as a pivotal figure in the Soviet hierarchy, involved with the Politburo (the central policy-making and governing body of the Soviet Communist party), Communist party leaders, and industry. Benvenuti summarized the book as "an example of intellectual honesty and hard, scrupulous work: to be meditated, imitated and patiently and fruitfully continued."

The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror examines ten years in the operations of Stalin's brutal labor camps through the lens of more than one hundred documents from Soviet archives. As Jack M. Lauber observed in History, it is "the first in-depth study of the Gulag from 1929-1941" and "the first attempt to analyze its structure and role based on these archival sources." Through government reports and resolutions, memos, regulations, and statistics, Khlevniuk shows that Stalin was personally involved in decisions such as who would be imprisoned and under what conditions, and he reveals the wide range of individuals who became its victims. Not just a place for the so-called reform of political dissidents, the Gulag system came to function as an open-air prison for ordinary criminals, ethnic groups perceived as a threat to Communism, drunks, prisoners of war, and even street urchins. Writing on H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Thomas Reimer felt that the book "adds much to our knowledge about the internal workings of the Stalinist penal regime" and "should serve as an excellent resource for college instructors and others." New Leader reviewer Robert V. Daniels commented that "Khlevniuk makes some important points," although he found the book "not an easy read" and remarked that "there is not much of the historian as intermediary who might shape the material to make it easier to grasp." In a Foreign Affairs review, on the other hand, Robert Legvold stated that Khlevniuk includes "very helpful commentaries." Lauber concluded that the book "will take its place among the seminal works in any study of the USSR."

Written with Yoram Gorlizki, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953 focuses on what some writers identified as the least-studied period of Stalin's rule. Using "a much wider range of sources than any other study," according to Michael F. Hopkins in the Contemporary Review, the authors analyze Stalin's seemingly irrational leadership style to discover its political logic. Several critics noted the authors' use of the term "neo-patrimonial" to describe Stalin's leadership—Stalin exerted patriarchal control over state policy and the men in his inner circle, such that his will was felt in all areas of government, but left the Council of Ministers to make specific decisions regarding the economy by committee. "It is a useful concept," wrote James Voorhees in H-Net Reviews, "and perhaps the most important contribution of this study." Critics such as Christopher Read in History remarked on the "challenging interpretations" offered by the authors, and he and others deemed it an "excellent study." In the words of Simon Sebag Montefiore in the Spectator, "this brilliant book delivers readable narrative history, superb archival research and a splendid analysis" of Stalin.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 1994, David L. Hoffmann, review of 1937-i: Stalin, NKVD i sovetskoe obshchestvo, p. 271; February, 1997, Lewis H. Siegelbaum, review of In Stalin's Shadow: The Career of "Sergo" Ordzhonikidze, p. 141; December, 2004, Eric Duskin, review of Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953, p. 1678.

Canadian Journal of History, April, 1996, Michael Jabara Carley, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 125.

Choice, November, 1995, D.J. Dunn, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 524; October, 2004, R.D. Law, review of Cold Peace, p. 350; November, 2005, A. Ezergailis, review of The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, p. 553.

Contemporary Review, December, 2004, Michael F. Hopkins, "The Structure of Stalin's Rule 1945-1953," p. 367.

English Historical Review, February, 2005, Alexander Hill, review of Cold Peace, p. 265.

European History Quarterly, January, 2007, E.A. Rees, review of Cold Peace, p. 148.

Europe-Asia Studies, September, 1996, Francesco Benvenuti, review of In Stalin's Shadow, p. 1051; June, 1997, Kevin McDermott, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 746; September, 2004, Ian D. Thatcher, review of The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36, p. 907.

Foreign Affairs, September-October, 1995, Robert Legvold, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 175; March-April, 2005, Robert Legvold, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 165.

Historian, fall, 2005, Simon Ball, review of Cold Peace, p. 566; winter, 2006, Roy R. Robson, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 882.

History, April, 1997, Donny Gluckstein, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 365; summer, 2004, Christopher Read, review of Cold Peace, p. 153; fall, 2005, Jack M. Lauber, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 24.

Journal of Cold War Studies, fall, 2006, Terry Martin, review of The Nature of Stalin's Dictatorship: The Politburo, 1924-1953.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 2007, William Jay Risch, review of Cold Peace, p. 129.

Journal of Modern History, March, 2006, Norman M. Naimark, review of Cold Peace, p. 283; March, 2007, Wendy Z. Goldman, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 228.

Library Journal, November 15, 2004, Harry Willems, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 71.

Moscow Times, January 21, 2005, Peter Rollberg, review of The History of the Gulag.

New Leader, January-February, 2005, Robert V. Daniels, "The Gulag in Grim Detail," p. 17.

New Republic, September 4, 1995, Eugene D. Genovese, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 34.

New Statesman, January 10, 2005, Richard Overy, "The Killing Fields: Once Shrouded in Secrecy, the History of the Soviet Concentration Camps Is Now Well Known. But Why Did These Open-Air Prisons Really Exist?," p. 50.

New York Review of Books, March 6, 1997, Robert Conquest, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 6.

Political Studies, December, 1996, Myles L.C. Robertson, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 998.

Publishers Weekly, October 11, 2004, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 65.

Reference & Research Book News, December, 1995, review of In Stalin's Shadow, p. 9.

Russian Review, April, 1996, Michael David-Fox, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 335; October, 1996, Hiroaki Kuromiya, review of In Stalin's Shadow, p. 721; January, 2005, review of Cold Peace; October, 2005, review of The History of the Gulag.

Slavic Review, winter, 1995, Alfred J. Rieber, review of Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody: Sbornik dokumentov, p. 1016, Stephen Kotkin, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 1017, Amy Knight, review of 1937-i, p. 1099, and review of Stalin i Ordzhonikidze: Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody, p. 1101; winter, 1996, Chris Ward, review of In Stalin's Shadow, p. 921; winter, 1997, review of In Stalin's Shadow, p. 921; spring, 2005, Zubok Vladislav, review of Cold Peace, p. 199.

Slavonic and East European Review, July, 1998, Derek Watson, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 563; January, 1999, Jeremy Smith, review of In Stalin's Shadow, p. 180; January, 2006, review of The History of the Gulag, p. 170.

Spectator, April 3, 2004, Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Music Has Charms to Soothe a Savage Beast," p. 50.

Times Literary Supplement, January 31, 1997, Martin Malia, review of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936, p. 6; October 17, 2003, Abraham Brumberg, review of The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36, p. 14.

ONLINE

H-Net Reviews,http://www.h-net.org/ (November, 2004), James Voorhees, "A New Look at an Aging Tyrant"; (November, 2005), Thomas Reimer, "An Inside View at the Machinery of Terror."

Institute of Historical Research,http://www.history.ac.uk/ (May, 2005), Miriam Dobson, review of Cold Peace.

University of Manchester School of Social Sciences Web site,http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/ (September 22, 2008), faculty profile and curriculum vitae.