Gregory

Hoover scholars were the coorganizers and presenters at the International Conference on Stalinism held in Moscow December 5–7. The conference was sponsored by the Yeltsin Foundation, the Russian Archival Service, and the human rights organization Memorial. It brought researchers from North America, Europe, and Asia together with Russian scholars from Moscow and the surrounding regions to discuss Stalin on the basis of recent archival discoveries in an effort to combat “pseudo-scientific” publications from the Stalin era that have contributed to perceptions of Stalin as a positive figure.

Hoover research fellow Paul Gregory organized the panel on political economy and was one of the six keynote speakers. Mark Harrison, a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow, spoke on Stalin and the Second World War; Eugenia Belova, also a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow, spoke on the economics of the Communist Party. Also delivering talks were past participants in Hoover’s Summer Archives Workshops: Andrei Markevich, from Moscow’s New Economic School; David Shearer, from the University of Delaware; Leonid Borodkin, from Moscow Univesity; Lynne Viola, from the University of Toronto; Hiroyaki Kuromiya, from the University of Indiana; and Oleg Khlevnyuk, from the Russian Archival Service.

Also discussed were the openness of Stalin archives in Russia and the growing importance of archival holdings in the West, such as those at Hoover. For a description of the conference, see www.dhi-moskau.de/seiten/veranstaltungen/programme/2008/history_stalinism.pdf For more on the conference, please see The Liberals Fight Back: The Moscow Conference on Stalinism.

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