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The Many Facets of Russian/Soviet History: Fieldwork Brings to Light New Primary and Documentary Sources

The Soviet Union under Stalin, particularly in the 1930s, is the core of my research. I continue to study both its foreign policy, particularly diplomatic relations between the USSR and Japan and its other neighbors in the Far East, and its internal affairs with special interest in its national mobilization programs, including development of the railroads and the munitions industry, mobilization of labor and exploitation of resources, expansion of the labor camps, and spread of military education. Other topics of my concern include analyzing the nature of Soviet centralized governance as revealed through relations between Moscow and local administrations in the Far East, as well as Soviet policy in the border regions, which were often the front lines of state measures to resist encirclement by the capitalist powers. I have been making special efforts to collect new sources not only from the archives of the Communist Party, the Russian government, the military, foreign ministry, and other central institutions in Moscow but also from regional archives in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

Soviet propaganda posters

Principal areas of interest

• Soviet political history, particularly during the time of Stalin
• Japan-Russia/Soviet relations from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries
• Russian/Soviet ethnic policies in border regions (e.g., Finland, Poland, Siberia, Far East)
• Contemporary Russian politics particularly under Vladimir Puti