Staff Profiles

After spending two years in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s, I taught at Newcastle from 1979 to 2017 and am now Emeritus Professor of the History of the Russian Empire. I visited Russia and/or Ukraine frequently in the course of my working life and sometimes spent long periods there.

My original field of research was the Ukrainian-Russian relationship, but over time I moved on to Anglo-Russian connections, Russian and Ukrainian intellectual history, and Russian social history. My research has also touched on various other aspects of the history of the Russian Empire (adminstrative history, economic affairs, international relations, regional diversity), as well as a few aspects of the history of the Soviet Union (mostly ethnic questions). At the moment I am working on the life and work of the Anglophone Russian novelist Nikolai Gubsky (1888-1971).

These are my publications:

2022: 'Why does President Putin Object to Ukraine?', Revolutionary Russia, vol 35, № 1, pp. 1-10

2021: with Lara Green, 'Stepniak on Tyneside: Nihilism, Fiction, and Publishing in North-East England', Publishing History vol 84, pp. 7-33

2017: ‘Challenge, Decline and Revival: The Fortunes of Pacifism in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Newcastle’, Northern History, vol 54, № 2, pp. 228-43

2017: ‘Captain Wiggins and Admiral Makarov: commerce and politics in the Russian Arctic (1874-1904)’, Polar Record, vol 53, № 4, pp 427-35

2016: ‘Icebreakers in Anglo-Russian Relations (1914–21)’, International History Review, vol. 38, № 4, pp 814-29

2014: ‘A Russian Consul in Newcastle upon Tyne: Baron Al´fons Al´fonsovich Geiking (1860-1930) and Anglo-Russian Connections at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’, Slavonica, vol 20, № 2, pp 96-113

2014: ‘An Anglo-Russian Critic of the Abolition of Serfdom’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol 92, № 2, pp 256-84

2011: ‘Charles Mitchell, Tyneside and Russia’s First Ironclads’, Northern History, vol 48, pp 75-95

2010: with Violetta Hionidou, ‘Exiles and Pioneers: Oral Histories of Greeks Deported from the Caucasus to Kazakhstan in 1949’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol 62, pp 1479-1501

2010: ‘The political and social order’, in A  History of Russian Thought, ed. William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp 17-43

 

2009: ‘The papers of W. E. Adams (1832-1906)’, Historical Research, vol 82, pp 176-80

 

2008/9: ‘The Russian Imperial Authorities and Yevhen Chykalenko’s Rozmovy pro selske khoziaistvo’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, vol 33/34, pp 417-27

 

2008: ‘The Starvation of Ukrainians in 1933: By-product or Genocide?’, in Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, ed. Lubomyr Y. Luciuk & Lisa Grekul (Kingston, Ontario: Kashtan Press), pp 95-105

 

2007: ‘Andreevskoe, An Estate in Nineteenth-Century Iaroslavl´’, in An Agenda for Regional History, ed. Bill Lancaster, Diana Newton, & Natasha Vall (Newcastle upon Tyne: Northumbria University Press), pp 131-45

 

2007: ‘Volkhovsky, Felix Vadimovich (1846-1914)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

 

2006: ‘The First World War and the End of Tsarism’, in Reinterpreting Revolutionary Russia: Essaysin Honour of James D. White, ed. Ian D. Thatcher (Houndmills, Basingstoke, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp 55-71

 

2005: ‘The 1905 Revolution on Tyneside’, in The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary Perspectives, ed. Jonathan D. Smele and Anthony Heywood (London and New York: Routledge), pp 260-78

 

2005: ‘Kravchinsky, Sergey Mikhailovich [pseud. Stepniak] (1851-95)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

 

2004: ‘Russia's Nationality Policy: The Case of Ukraine (1847-1941)’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, vol 29, pp 399-419

 

2004: ‘A Russian Bebel Revisited: The Individuality of Heinrich Matthäus Fischer (1871-1935)’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol 82, pp 625-54

 

2001: ‘Mykola Kostomarov (1817-1885) and the Creation of a Ukrainian Ethnic Identity’, Slavonica, vol 7, no 1, pp 7-24

 

2000: ‘Regional Diversity in the Later Russian Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, vol 10, pp 143-63

 

2000: ‘Russia, the Balkans, and Ukraine in the 1870s’, in Russia and the Wider World in Historical Perspective: Essays for Paul Dukes, ed. Cathryn Brennan and Murray Frame (Basingstoke and London:  Macmillan), pp 85-108

 

2000: ‘A Pyrrhic Victory: The Russian Empire in 1848’, in The Revolutions in Europe 1848-1849: From Reform to Reaction, ed. R. J. W. Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (Oxford: OUP), pp 135-55

 

2000: ‘P. A. Zaionchkovskii: High Society Subversive’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, new series, vol 1, pp 167-81

 

1999: ‘The static society: patterns of work in the later Russian Empire’, in Reinterpeting Russia, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (London: Arnold), pp 126-41

 

1998: ‘The Soviet Compound’, European History Quarterly, vol 28, pp 539-50

 

1995: ‘Russia and Ukraine under Alexander II: The Valuev Edict of 1863’, International History Review, vol 17, pp 23-50

 

1995: ‘Russia’s Ukrainian Policy (1847-1905): A Demographic Approach’, European History Quarterly, vol 25, pp 181-208

 

1995: ‘Nikolai Petrovich Rumiantsev and the Russian Discovery of Belarus’, Occasional Papers in Belarusian Studies, vol 1, pp 51-61

 

1993: 'Mikhail Katkov and Mykola Kostomarov:  A Note on Pëtr A. Valuev's Anti-Ukrainian Edict of 1863', Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol 17, pp 365-83

 

1993: ‘What makes a nation a nation? Ukrainians since 1600’, Ethnic Groups:  An International Periodical of Ethnic Studies, vol 10, pp 101-24

 

1993: ‘The Kirillo-Methodian Society’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol 71, pp 684-92

 

1992: Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform 1801-1881 (Longman, London and New York, xii 386pp)

 

1991: ‘Modern Ukrainian History (II)’, European History Quarterly, vol 21, pp 81-95

 

1988: ‘Britain and the Ukrainian Question (1912-1920)’, English Historical Review, vol 103, pp 40-68

 

1988: ‘Modern Ukrainian History’, European History Quarterly, vol 18, pp 473-9

 

1987: ‘History Teaching in Late Eighteenth-Century Russia', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol 10, pp 139-51

 

1985: The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture 1750-1850 (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton, Alberta, x 415pp)

 

1985: ‘Tyneside and the Making of the Russian Revolution’, Northern History, vol 21, pp 259-84

 

1984: ‘The Political Ideas of Russian Historians’, Historical Journal, vol 27, pp 757-71

 

1983: ‘Vladimir Burtsev and the Russian Revolutionary Emigration (1888-1905)’, European Studies Review, vol 13, pp 39-62

 

1983: ‘Z. D. Chodakowski (1784-1825) and the Unity of Slavonic Culture’, Nationalities Papers, vol 11, pp 284-97

 

1983: ‘Aliens in Britain and the Empire During the First World War’, in Loyalties in Conflict: Ukrainians in Canada During the Great War, ed. John Herd Thompson & Frances Swyripa (Edmonton), pp 99-124

 

1983: ‘Memory and the Red Elephant’, Sbornik, vol 9, pp 86-92

 

1982: ‘Historians and Concepts of Nationality in Early Nineteenth-Century Russia’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol 60, pp 44-62

 

1981: ‘Contemporary Critics of Gogol’s Vechera and the Debate about Russian narodnost' (1831-1832)’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol 5, pp 66-82

 

1980: ‘Stepniak and the London Emigration:  Letters to Robert Spence Watson (1887-1890)’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series, vol 13, pp 80-93 

 

 As a teacher of undergraduates, I probably spent as much time on Soviet as I did on tsarist history. I also introduced and led Newcastle's first undergraduate modules in World History. Jointly with a colleague I set up an MA in Russian Social History in the 1990s, and from the 2000s I was involved in the provision of Newcastle's MA in European History. Two of my PhD students have become university teachers.