Staff Profiles
Dr Robert Dale
Senior Lecturer in Russian History
- Email: robert.dale@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: +44 (0) 191 20 87853
- Address: Room 2.33
School of History, Classics and Archaeology,
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Armstrong Building,
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
United Kingdom
Introduction
I am a historian of twentieth-century Russian and Soviet history, with a particular interest in the late Stalinist period (1945-1953). I re-joined Newcastle University and the School of History, Classics and Archaeology in September 2015, having previously taught Russian history here in 2010-11.
I am particularly interested in the impact of war and violence upon Russian/Soviet society, the impact of the Great Patriotic War on the Soviet Union, the demobilisation and post-war adjustment of Red Army veterans, the history of St. Petersburg / Petrograd / Leningrad, and the late Stalinist period.
I would be delighted to discuss research projects with potential graduate students interested in the history of twentieth-century Russian and Soviet history, particularly projects related to my interests in the social, economic and cultural impact of war on individuals and societies.
Qualifications
Ph.D. in History, Queen Mary, University of London, 2011
M.A. in History, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2004
B.A. in History, University of York, 2002.
Previous Positions
2015-2022, Lecturer in Russian History, Newcastle University
2014-2015, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Nottingham Trent University
2012-2014, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, King's College London
2011-2012, Teaching Fellow in Modern European History, University of York
2010-2011, Teaching Fellow in Russian History, Newcastle University
Memberships
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies
Association for Slavic and East European Studies
Study Group on the Russian Revolution
Social History Society
Society for the History of War
European Society for Environmental History
Honours and Awards
2010 George L. Mosse Prize by the Journal of Contemporary History for my first published article 'Rats and Resentment'.
2017 Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
Roles and Responsibilities
I am the Postgraduate Selector for History, which means I have a key role in the admissions process to our PhD programmes, and help administer our PhD programme.
Semester 1 - 2024/25
Undergraduate Teaching
HIS1100 - Evidence and Argument (Module Leader)
HIS3355 - The Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps - Origins, Experiences and Aftermaths (Module Leader)
HIS3020 - Writing History (Dissertation Supervision)
Postgraduate Teaching
HIS8121 - Public History I: Projects in Global Public History
Semester 2 - 2024/25
Undergraduate Teaching
HIS1101 - Historical Sources and Methods
HIS2306 - Famines in History
HIS2317 - The Aftermath of War in Europe and Asia 1945-56
HIS2321 - Destroying Nature: Disasters, Diseases, and Environmental Justice
HIS3020 - Writing History (Dissertation Supervision)
Postgraduate Teaching
HIS8053 - Conflict in European History
HIS8999 - Research Dissertation in History
Office Hours (Provisional as on 30/07/24
Semester 1: Monday 12.00 - 13.00, Tuesday 12.00 - 13.00 and Thursdays 13.00 - 14.00
Semester 2: Tuesdays 12.00 - 13.00, Wednesdays 10.00 - 12.00
Research Interests
Russian and Soviet history
Stalinism, especially late Stalinism
Demobilisation and veterans
Post-War societies
St. Petersburg / Petrograd / Leningrad
Flooding
My first book, Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) grew out of my doctoral research. It attempts to explore how and how successful over 300,000 former soldiers were stood down in a war ravaged society. Leningrad's veterans would find the transition to civilian life more challenging than many could ever have imagined. Civilian Leningraders found find the rapid influx of returning soldiers an enormous political, economic, social and cultural challenge. Based on extensive original research in local and national archives, oral history interviews, and newspaper collections I attempt to peel back the myths woven around demobilization to reveal a darker history of demobilization often repressed by society and concealed from official historiography. While propaganda celebrated demobilization as a smooth process which reunited veterans with their families, reintegrated them into the workforce and facilitated upward social mobility, the reality was different. Many veterans were caught up in the scramble for work, housing, healthcare and state hand-outs. Others drifted to the social margins, criminality or became the victims of post-war political repression. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad tells the story of both the failure of local representatives to support returning Soviet soldiers, and the remarkable resilience and creativity of veterans in solving the problems created by their return to society.
Current Work
My current research is comes out of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, held initially at King's College London and then Nottingham Trent University. The project, entitled From Fractured Society to Stability: Overcoming the Legacy of the Great Patriotic War investigates the extent to which Soviet Russia was able to overcome the traumatic legacy of the Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front in World War Two). Drawing on national and local archives, newspapers, recently published sources, the project maps the divisions created by the aftermath of total warfare. It addresses how war's painful legacy destabilised and divided post-war society, as well as the difficulties the Stalinist state faced regaining control. The project seeks to establish when and how Russia finally emerged from war's shadow to become a more stable and cohesive society. The project seeks to examine these issues from the perspective of both the central party-state in Moscow as well as carefully selected local cases studies.
I am also working on a side project on the history of the Leningrad Flood of 1924, and what it reveals about early Bolshevik society. Some details about this project can be found on that project's blog at the following link.
Funding
October 2019 - June 2022 - Wellcome Trust, Institutional Strategic Support Fund, Small Grant, Pain on the Periphery: Physical Disability and Psychological Trauma Among Red Army Veterans Beyond the Soviet Centre, 1945 to 1970 - £4,580.
July 2018 - September 2018 - Arts and Humanities Research Council, International Placements Scheme Fellowship to be held at Library of Congress for a project entitled - Rebuilding Socialism: The Reconstruction of the Soviet Union and its Official Ideology through the lens of Post-War published Sources - £4,470.
July 2016 - July 2017 - War Veterans and Postwar Transition: Lessons from the Past and Future Reintegration - Newcastle University, Institute for Social Renewal - £741.25
2012- 2015 - British Academy, Post-Doctoral Fellowship, From fractured society to stability: Overcoming the aftermath of war in Soviet Russia 1945-1955 Full Economic Cost - £221,479.
July 2012 - Santander International Connections Award (Travel Grant), The Deluge: The 1924 Leningrad Flood: Events, Reactions and Responses, £975.
2009 - 2010, Dissertation Fellowship, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Life after War: The Demobilisation And Postwar Adjustment of Red Army Veterans In Leningrad And The Leningrad Region 1944-1950, $20,000.
2007, Stretton Fund. Travel Bursary from QMUL History Department, £500.
2006 - 2009 Doctoral Award Holder, Arts and Humanities Research Council, fees, maintenance grant and overseas research funding.
Completed PhD Students
Dr Alberto Murro, Axis Police Forces. Collaboration and Transnational Interactions between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (1936-1943), 2022 (Co-Supervised with Professor Tim Kirk, Professor Claudia Baldoli and Dr James Koranyi).
Research Identifiers
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Articles
- Dale R. Whose War Was It, Anyway? Writing Histories of the Soviet Union in World War II. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2024, 25(2), 434-452.
- Dale R. Visualizing the Red Army's Demobilization: Photography, Reconstructing Community and Creating Post-War Memory. Journal of War and Culture Studies 2022, 15(2), 157-182.
- Dale R. Remobilizing the Dead: Wartime and Postwar Soviet Burial Practices and the Construction of the Memory of the Great Patriotic War. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2021, 22(1), 41-73.
- Dale R. Divided we Stand: Cities Social Unity and Post-War Reconstruction in Soviet Russia, 1945-1953. Contemporary European History 2015, 24(4), 493-516.
- Dale R. Ratas y Resentimientio: La Desmovilizacion Del Ejercito Rojo en Leningrado Durante la Posguerra, 1945-1950. Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 2014, 3(6), 219-238.
- Dale R. The Valaam Myth and the Fate of Leningrad's Disabled Veterans. Russian Review 2013, 72(2), 260-284.
- Dale R. Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945-1950. Journal of Contemporary History 2010, 45(1), 113-133.
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Authored Book
- Dale R. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
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Book Chapters
- Dale R. Testing the Silence: Trauma and Military Psychiatry in Soviet Russia and Ukraine During and After World War II. In: Ville Kivimaki and Peter Leese, ed. Trauma, Experience and Narrative in Europe after World War II. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp.55-87.
- Dale R. 'There, where they have grown accustomed to flooding': Comparing the St. Petersburg Flood of November 1824 and the Leningrad Flood of September 1924. In: David Moon, Nicholas Breyfogle, and Alexandra Bekasova, ed. Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History. Cambridgeshire: White Horse Press, 2021, pp.119-145.
- Dale R. Efim Segal Shell-shocked Sergeant: Red Army Veterans and the Expression and Representation of Trauma Memories. In: Peter Leese, Julia Barbara Köhne, Jason Crouthamel, ed. Languages of Trauma: History, Memory and Media. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, pp.97-119.
- Dale R. "For what and for whom were we fighting?": Red Army Soldiers, Combat Motivation and Survival Strategies on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. In: Catriona Pennell and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ed. A World At War, 1911-1949 Explorations in the Cultural History of War. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019, pp.133-158.
- Dale R. 'Being a Real Man': Masculinities in Soviet Russia during and after the Great Patriotic War. In: Peniston-Bird C; Vickers E, ed. Gender and the Second World War: The Lessons of War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp.116-134.
- Dale R. "No longer normal": Traumatized Red Army Veterans in Post-war Leningrad. In: Leese P; Crouthamel J, ed. Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After. New York, NY, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.119-141.
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Online Publications
- Dale R. The history of Luzhniki Stadium, home of the 2018 football World Cup final. History Extra (The official website for BBC History Magazine and BBC World Histories Magazine), 2018. Available at: https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/luzhniki-stadium-football-world-cup-final-moscow-history-soviet-union-russia/.
- Dale R. Coming Home: Demobilization, Trauma and Postwar Readjustment in Late Stalinist Leningrad. Universitat Bern Historisches Institut: Portal Militargeschichte - Arbeitskreis Militargeschichte e.V, 2015. Available at: http://portal-militaergeschichte.de/sites/default/files/pdf/dale_demobilization_0.pdf.
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Reviews
- Dale R. Soviet Nightingales: Care under Communism, by Susan Grant [Book Review]. Revolutionary Russia 2023, 36(2), 289-291.
- Dale R. Russia's War, by Jade McGlynn [Book Review]. Central European University Review of Books 2023.
- Dale R. Review of Mischa Gabowitsch (ed.), Pamiatnik i prazdnik: etnografiia Dnia Pobedy, Nestor-Istoriia, St. Petersburg, 2020. The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies 2023, 23, 6513.
- Dale R. The Victory Banner over the Reichstag: Film, Document, and Ritual in Russia's Contested Memory of World War II by Jeremy Hicks [Book review]. The Russian Review 2022, 81(1), 156-157.
- Dale R. Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, edited by Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh [Book Review]. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 2021, 20(1), 130-131.
- Dale R. Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan (eds), Dropping out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc. Journal of Contemporary History 2020, 55(2), 466-468.
- Dale R. Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War, by Wilson T. Bell. English Historical Review 2020, 135(577), 1629-1631.
- Dale R. It's Only a Joke Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life under Stalin by Jonathan Waterlow. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 2020, 47(2), 242-245.
- Dale R. Review of Polina Barskova, Besieged Leningrad: Aesthetic Responses to Urban Disaster. Modern Language Review 2019, 114(1), 173-174.
- Dale R. Crimea in War and Transformation by Mara Kozelsky [Book Review]. Journal of Military History 2019, 83(4), 1277-1279.
- Dale R. The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad, by Alexis Peri [Book Review]. The Journal of Modern History 2018, 90(4), 993-994.
- Dale R. Stalin's Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers became Hitler's Collaborators, 1941-1945, by Mark Edele [Book Review]. The Slavonic and East European Review 2018, 96(4), 793-795.
- Dale R. The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military by Peter Whitewood [Book review]. Journal of Military History 2017, 81(4), 1195-1196.
- Dale R. Hunger and War: Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union During World War II, edited by Wendy Z. Goldman and Donald Filtzer [Book review]. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 2017, 44(3), 357-361.
- Dale R. Stalinist City Planning. Professionals, Performance and Power. Europe-Asia Studies 2015, 67(8), 1329-1331.
- Dale R. Saving Stalin's Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930–1950 by Maddox, Steven. Slavonic and East European Review 2015, 93(4), 775-777.
- Dale R. The Great War in Russian Memory, by Karen Petrone. Europe-Asia Studies 2014, 65(10), 2023-2024.
- Dale R. Myth, Memory and Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953-70 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) by Polly Jones. History Today 2014, 64(12), 62.
- Dale R. Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War, by Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona. Comparativ: Zeitschrift fur globalgeschichte und vergleichende gesellschaftsforschung 2013, 23(4/5), 232-234.
- Dale R. Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941 by Katerina Clark. The Russian Review 2012, 71(3), 534-535.
- Dale R. Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II by Roger R. Reese. Slavonic and East European Review 2012, 90(4), 777-778.
- Dale R. Little Soldiers: How Soviet Children Went to War 1941-1945 by Olga Kucherenko. Europe-Asia Studies 2012, 64(5), 959-961.