Service speaking at the Tallinn Literature Festival HeadRead in May 2011
|
|
Born | Robert John Service 29 October 1947 United Kingdom |
---|---|
Main interests
|
Russian history (1917–53) |
Major works
|
Biographies of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky |
Robert John Service (born 29 October 1947) is a British historian, academic, and author who has written extensively on the history of the Soviet Union, particularly the era from the October Revolution to Stalin's death. He is currently a professor of Russian history at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Service is best known for his 2000, 2004, and 2009 biographies of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, respectively.
Career
Service spent his undergraduate years at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied Russian and classical Greek. He went to Essex and Leningrad universities for his postgraduate work, and taught at Keele and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, before joining Oxford University in 1998, where he currently teaches.
Between 1986 and 1995, Service published a three-volume biography of Vladimir Lenin. He wrote several works of general history on 20th-century Russia, including A History of Twentieth-Century Russia. His trilogy of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks leaders biographies include Lenin (2000), Stalin (2004) and Trotsky (2009). His biography of Trotsky was favourably reviewed in the British and American press on its publication, but two years later was strongly criticised by Service's Hoover Institution colleague Bertrand Patenaude in a review for the American Historical Review.[1] Patenaude, reviewing Service's book alongside a rebuttal by the Trotskyite David North (In Defence of Leon Trotsky), charged Service with making dozens of factual errors, misrepresenting evidence, and "fail[ing] to examine in a serious way Trotsky's political ideas".[2] Service responded that the book's factual errors were minor and that Patenaude's own book on Trotsky presented him as a "noble martyr". In July 2009, prior to the publication of his own book, Service had written a review of Partenaude's publication Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky which he applauded for being "vividly told" but also criticised for neglecting Trotsky's crimes while sharing power in the USSR.
Publications
- The Bolshevik Party in Revolution 1917-23: A Study in Organizational Change (1979)
- A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (1997)
- The Penguin History of Modern Russia From Tsarism to the 21st Century (1997)[3]
- A History of Modern Russia, from Nicholas II to Putin (1998, Second edition in 2003)
- The Russian Revolution, 1900-27 (Studies in European History) (1999)
- Lenin: A Biography (2000)
- Russia: Experiment with a People (2002)
- Stalin: A Biography (2004), Oxford, 715 pages ill. ISBN O-330-41913-7(2004)[4]
- Comrades: A World History of Communism (2007)
- Trotsky: A Biography (2009)[5][6][7]
- Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West (2011)[8]
References
- ^ McLemee, Scott. "The Re-Assassination of Leon Trotsky". Inside Higher Ed. 8 July 2011
- ^ Bertrand M. Patenaude (June 2011). "Robert Service. Trotsky: A Biography. David North. In Defense of Leon Trotsky". The American Historical Review (book review) 116 (3): 900–902. doi:10.1086/ahr.116.3.900.
- ^ "The Penguin History of Modern Russia – Robert Service – Penguin Books". Penguin.co.uk. 24 September 2009. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
- ^ "Review of Robert Service's Stalin: A Biography–Part One". Wsws.org. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
- ^ "John Gray on Trotsky by Robert Service". Literary Review. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
- ^ "Review: A ‘dis-Service’ to Leon Trotsky". socialistworld.net. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
- ^ A book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship The American Historical Review discredits Robert Service’s biography of Leon Trotsky
- ^ http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/12/soviet-russia-british-early
External links
- Robert Service's homepage
- Roberts, Russ (26 July 2010). "Robert Service on Trotsky". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.
- Appearances on C-SPAN
|