Professor Orlando Figes

Contact details

Birkbeck, University of London,
Room 4.03, 28 Russell Square, Bloomsbury
London WC1B 5DQ

Email: o.figes@ntlworld.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 7631 6205

My research covers many different aspects of Russian, Soviet and East European history. My major publications are on the history of the Russian revolution, the Soviet regime, and the cultural history of Russia since 1700. My most recent book is Crimea: The Last Crusade (Allen Lane, 2010), a history of the Crimean War. Before that I published The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007). My next book is a true love story set in the Gulag. It is based on several thousand letters smuggled in and out of one of Stalin's most notorious labour camps.The book is called Just Send me Word and you can find out more about it here.
I have a website with more information about my publications and materials from my research that you may use. Visit my website.

I encourage applications in all fields of Russian and East European history. I particularly welcome projects in cultural and social history, the politics of nationality, peasant studies and the social, political and intellectual history of the socialist and communist movements.
If you are interested in pursuing research in any of these areas, you should first read our advice on how to apply for MPhil/PhD research before submitting an application.

Russian and European history in the modern period.
My current courses include an MA module: 'The Soviet Experience: Stalinism Through the Eyes of the Individual' which will be taught in the summer term of 2010; and a new BA Group 2 course, 'A Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution, 1891-1991', which I will be teaching in the Autumn and Spring Terms of 2011-2012.
I have a new website for schools and colleges with materials which you may use. Visit my new websites.

Crimea: The Last Crusade (2010)
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007).
Natasha's Dance: a cultural history of Russia (London, Penguin 2002).
Interpreting the Russian Revolution: the Language and Symbols of 1917 (with Boris Kolonitski, Yale University Press, 1999)
A People's Tragedy: the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (London: Pimlico,1996).
(This book won the Wolfson history prize, the NCR book award, the W.H. Smith literary award, the Longman/History Today book of the year award and the Los Angeles Times book prize).
Peasant Russia, Civil War: the Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-21 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 198)