Social and Subjective - Soviet History after the Cold War: An Interview with Sheila Fitzpatrick

Sheila Fitzpatrick is a historian of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. She is currently Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. She received a D Phil from Oxford University in 1969. Her interests include Soviet social, political, and cultural history, 1917-1953; as well as issues of social identity, social mobility, bureaucratic politics and the peasantry. Her recent work has focused on everyday social and cultural practices during the Stalin period. In 1999 she published 'Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s' (1999). Her other works include 'The CulturalFront: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia' (1992) and 'Stalin’s Peasant: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization' (1994). She has recently edited 'Stalinism: New Directions' (2000) and (with Yuri Slezkine) 'In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War' (2000), and is co-editor of 'The Journal of Modern History'. Professor Fitzpatrick was at the University of Western Australia in August 2001 courtesy of the Institute of Advanced Studies and the History Department. She spoke to Tim Dymond