Anatol Shmelev is a research fellow, curator of the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent State Collection, and the project archivist for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Collection, all at the Hoover Institution.

Because Shmelev’s expertise is in twentieth-century Russian history, specializing in the Russian Civil War, he is principally responsible for acquiring Russian archival materials.

He is also the author of Tracking a Diaspora: Emigres from Russia and Eastern Europe in the Repositories and has published articles in Revolutionary Russia, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and other journals.

Shmelev received his PhD from the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, in 1996; his dissertation was on the foreign policy of the Siberian government during the Russian Civil War.