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Jochen HellbeckAssociate Professor Ph.D., Columbia University At Rutgers since 2003 002F Van Dyck
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RESEARCH INTERESTSA historian of Russia by background, I am particularly interested in studying autobiographical accounts and people’s self-understandings in historical perspective. My recent book, Revolution on My Mind (2006), explores personal diaries written in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The book addresses the paradox of self-expression in an overtly repressive political system. It also shows how Soviet diarists, while embracing the pronoun "I," molded themselves into particles of a larger "We."
I am currently preparing a cultural history of the battle of Stalingrad. Based on newly discovered human documents—letters, diaries, photographs, wartime interview protocols, and surveillance reports—I explore how soldiers and civilians on both sides of the front made sense of their lives during a prolonged and ferocious battle that marked a turning point in the Second World War. The project seeks to understand the competing appeals of Soviet and Nazi German ideologies through an examination of the thoughts and actions of the people who lived, fought, and died in Stalingrad, on all sides of the front.
I am also at work on a film documentary on intimate communism. Building on interviews with surviving diary authors as well as historical footage, the film dramatizes the inner appeal, the hopes, and the despair of three Communists who lived under Stalin.
As a member of the Rutgers graduate faculty I work with students interested in the cultural, political, and intellectual history of modern Russia and the Soviet Union, and in transnational explorations of Communism, WW II, and the Cold War. I encourage applicants to the graduate program in any of these areas to email me before the application deadline.
COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT Undergraduate - 510:375 - Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union
- 510:373 - State and Society in Imperial Russia
- 510:271 - Russia and the West
- 510:102 - Development of Europe II (1700-2000)
- 506:401/402 - Seminar in Autobiography and History
- 506:401 - Russian History through Film
Graduate - 510:599 Problems and Directed Readings: Modern Europe
- Seminar in European History
PUBLICATIONS - Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, May 2006)
- Autobiographical Practices in Russia, ed. with Klaus Heller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004)
- “The Diaries of Fritzes and the Letters of Gretchens”: Personal Writings from the German-Soviet War and Their Readers,” Kritika 8:3 (Summer 2009)
- “With Hegel to Salvation: Bukharin’s Other Trial,” Representations 107 (Summer 2009)
- “Galaxy of Black Stars: The Power of Soviet Biography,” American Historical Review 115 (June 2009)
- “The Ice Forge ,” The Nation, February 13, 2008
- “War and Peace for the Twentieth Century,” Raritan 26:4 (Spring 2007)
- “Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent in Stalinist Russia,” Kritika I/1 (Winter 2000); reprinted in The Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History, ed. Michael David-Fox (Bloomington, 2003)
- "Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi (1931-1939)," in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 1996, 3: 344-373; reprinted in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York, 2000)
- “The Analysis of Soviet Subjectivity Practices: Interview with the editors of Ab Imperio,” Ab Imperio 2002, no. 3, pp. 217-60, 397-402 (in Russian)
AWARDS - American Academy in Berlin Fellowship (2009)
- Rutgers Board of Trustees Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence (2007)
- Michigan Society of Fellows (1997-1999)
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
- International Advisory Board, Department of History, European University of St. Petersburg, Russia
- American Historical Association (AHA)
- American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS)
- Verband der Osteuropahistoriker Deutschlands
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