GATRELL

Professor Peter GATRELL

Bégli (Refugees), by Jékabs Kazáks (1895-1920), painted in 1917 and now housed in Latvijas Makslas Muzeju

My main research and teaching interests are in the field of modern European social, economic and cultural history, with a particular focus on modern Russia (see attached list of recent publications). I have many years' experience teaching advanced courses on Russian economic history in the twentieth century and on "Revolution in Russian society, 1900-1921" (for course web site, follow this link). In both instances, final-year students have regularly written dissertations under my supervision.

Together with Dr Stuart Jones I co-ordinate the MA in Modern European History and teach the core course 'Modern Europe: State, Society and Economy since 1780'.

I also offer an option to MA students on "Social upheaval in Russia, 1880-1940", currently co-taught with Dr. Nick Baron.

My most recent book deals with population displacement in the Russian empire during the First World War. Entitled A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during the First World War, it was published by Indiana University Press at the end of 1999 (Indiana University Press Home Page). The focus is on the constitution of what I term "refugeedom", humanitarian relief efforts, refugees' self-perception, and issues of gender, the labour market, nationality, and social order before and during the Russian revolution of 1917-18. I draw extensively on material in Russian, Latvian, Armenian and U.S. libraries and archives, particularly on local and provincial newspapers and specialist contemporary studies. This project was funded by the British Academy which awarded me a research readership in 1995-97, and by the University of Manchester Research Support Fund.

My monograph was awarded the 2000 Wayne Vucinich Prize for "outstanding work in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies" by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. This was presented at the National Convention of the AAASS in Denver, in November 2000. My book also received the 2001 Alec Nove Prize from the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, presented at the annual conference in Cambridge in April 2001.

In 1999 I was awarded AHRB funding for a five year project entitled "Population displacement, state-building and social identity in the former Russian empire, 1918-1930". This extends my research into the era of the so-called successor states and the early years of the Soviet Union. For details of this project please follow this link. For more details of my Research Associate, see Dr. Nick Baron.

During the next few years I plan to complete a general book on economy and society in Russia during the First World War. I am currently supervising 3 doctoral dissertations: by Laura Rubio ("Territory and nationality in the construction of ethnic and national identity in Tibetan exiled communities, 1959-2000"), by Rosaria Franco ("State children: abandoned and refugee children in the USSR and FSU, 1943-2000") and by Jo Laycock ("Armenia: history, archaeology and ethnicity, 19^th-20^th centuries", co-supervised with Dr Sian Jones, Department of Archaeology). I also supervise the MPhil dissertation by Christine Siddelley ("Ukrainian DPs in Britain, 1945-1955"). As this suggests, I have research interests in all aspects of population movements in the modern world.

I continue to maintain a close teaching and research interest in issues related to the long-run economic history of Russia, continuing and extending some of the themes outlined in my book on The Tsarist Economy, 1850-1917, B.T. Batsford, 1986. I plan in the longer term to embark on a major book on the impact of industrialization in Europe, c.1750-1914. This will reconsider Alexander Gerschenkron's work on economic backwardness and typologies of industrialization, as well as the impact of industrialization on such issues as consumption, the labour process, gender, war, and culture.

I would be delighted to discuss research proposals with students who are thinking of embarking on postgraduate work in any of the above or in related fields, including also the history of defence production and procurement on which I have also published. There is wonderful scope for further research in such areas as forced population displacement in the two world wars. We can offer excellent resources for topics in this field. Like Nick Baron, I have excellent contacts with historians, archivists and librarians in Russia and the former Soviet Union, in my case particularly with scholars in St.Petersburg, Moscow, Iaroslavl', Kursk, Riga, and Erevan. I can offer advice on working in archives in most of these cities, based upon my own experience. I also maintain contact with historians and social scientists in area studies through membership of the committee of the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies. I have close ties with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. The John Rylands University Library has good holdings in Russian history (including some scarce publications from the library of Maxim Vinaver) and takes the major journals in this area. We hold microfiche copies of all published Soviet census data and have recently purchased microfilm of the unpublished archival materials of the suppressed 1937 and 1939 censuses. The Deansgate building houses the uncatalogued personal papers of the leading Trudovik politician A.F. Aladin, including telegrams and messages submitted by peasants from Simbirsk before and during the first Russian Duma in 1906. For further details see JRULM Deansgate Main Page.

I am a member of the editorial board of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (University of Maryland, see http://www.slavica.com), of Istoricheskie zapiski (Russian Academy of Sciences), and of Ab Imperio (Kazan).

Please also refer to the department's web page for further information about the MA in Modern European History and the MAin Economic and Social History.

MAIN RECENT PUBLICATIONS

A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during the First World War, Indiana University Press, 1999.

Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
"Domestic and international dimensions of population displacement in Russia, 1914-1918", in Silvio Pons, ed., Russia in the Age of Wars, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1999, pp.37-52.
"Poor Russia: environment and politics in the long-run economic history of Russia", in Geoffrey Hosking & Robert Service, eds., Reinterpreting Russia, Edward Arnold, 1999, pp.89-106.
"Refugees in the Russian empire, 1914-1917: population displacement and social identity", and "Industrialists and revolution", both in E.D.J. Acton and W.G. Rosenberg, eds., Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, Edward Arnold, 1997, pp.554-64.
"Economic culture, economic policy and economic growth in Russia, 1861-1914", Cahiers du monde russe, vol.36, 1995, pp.5-20.
"Big business and the state in Russia, 1915-1918: the engineering lobby", in J.M.Cooper et al., eds., Soviet History, 1917-1953: Essays in Honour of R.W.Davies, Macmillan, 1995, pp.1-21.
"The meaning of the great reforms in Russian economic history", in B.Eklof, J.Bushnell, L.Zakharova, eds. Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881, Indiana University Press, 1994, pp.84-101.
"The First World War and war communism, 1914-1920", in R.W.Davies, M.Harrison and S.G.Wheatcroft, eds., The Soviet Economic Transformation,1913-1945, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp.216-237.
(jointly with R.M.Harrison) "The Russian and Soviet economies in two world wars: a comparative view", Economic History Review, 2nd ser., vol.46, 1993, pp.425-52
"Ethnicity and empire in Russia's borderland history", Historical Journal, vol.38, 1995, pp.715-27.

I have also written an electronic review of Geoffrey Hosking, Russia, People and Empire, 1556-1917 for the IHR series, Reviews in History .