People Details

For much of my academic life I studied and taught the social and political history of Russia in early 20th century, especially the revolutionary years before, during and after 1917. In later years, my focus shifted to the history of Zionism in Soviet Russia of the 1920s and the impact of ideologically committed immigrants from the Soviet Union on the formation of Jewish society in Palestine and the State of Israel. 

Since retiring from Rutgers, I have completed a project that kept me working for years in the archives of the Soviet security services, the Communist Party, and other agencies. The result, a two-volume annotated scholarly edition, was published in Moscow under the series “Political Parties of Russia.” It traces the ideological, programmatic and organizational evolution of 12 Zionist parties, youth movements, and training organizations active on Soviet territory in the 1920s and early 1930s and their interactions with the Soviet authorities.

I am currently at work on a history of my parents, tracing their early lives in Soviet Russia, their turn toward socialist-Zionism, and their engagement with a series of labor and kibbutz movements in Europe and Palestine. Tentatively titled “From Russia to Palestine and Elsewhere: The life and work of Klara and Lasia Galili of Kibbutz Afikim,” the study is conceived in a dual key – with me, the author, present both as a historian and a daughter.

• Sionistskie partii i organizatsii v SSSR. 20-e gody (“Zionist Parties and Organizations in the USSR. 1920s.”). 2 volumes. Co-editor with V. Vasylev, V. Khristoforov. Rospen. Moscow, 2019.
• Exiled to Palestine: The Immigration of Zionist Convicts from Soviet Russia, 1924-1934. With Boris Morozov. Routledge, London, 2006.
• Men'sheviki v bol'shevistskoi Rossii ("The Mensheviks in Bolshevik Russia"). 4 volumes. Co-editor with A. Nenarokov. Rospen. Moscow:, 1999-2004.
• Men'sheviki v 1917 godu ("The Mensheviks in 1917"). 4 volumes. Co-editor with A. Nenarokov. Progress-Akademiia & Rospen, Moscow, 1994-1997.
• The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies. Princeton University Press, 1989. (Translated into Russian as Men'shevistskie lidery v Russkoi revoliutsii: sotsial'naia real'nost' i politicheskaia strategiia, Respublika, Moscow, December 1993).

SELECTED RECENT ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• “The Paradox of Soviet Influence: The Case of Kibbutz Hashomer Hatza’ir from the USSR,” From Europe’s East to the Middle East: Israel’s Russian and Polish Lineages, Eds. Kenneth Moss, Benjamin Nathans, Taro Tsurumi, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2021.
• “The Russian Revolution: A Retrospective Reading”, Historiia, Jerusalem, Fall 2017, Nos. 39-40, pp. 15-36 (Hebrew).
• “Zionism in the Soviet Union from the Revolution to the Second World War,” Jewish History in Russia. From the 1917 Revolution to the Fall of the Soviet Union, ed. Mikhail Beizer, Gesharim, Moscow, 2017, pp. 110-144 (Russian).
• Zionism in Soviet Russia, 1917-1939, Geo-Cultural Aspects of Zionism. 2 vols., ed. Alon Gal. Jerusalem, 2009, pp. 91-133 (Hebrew).
• “Zionism in the Early Soviet State: Between Legality and Persecution,” Revolution, Repression, and Revival. The Soviet Jewish Experience. Ed. Zvi Gitelman and Yaacov Ro’i. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, New York, 2007, pp. 37-67.
• “Archives and Historical Writing: The Case of the Menshevik Party, 1917,” Archives, Documentation and Institutions of Social Memory. Essays from the Sawyer Seminar, edited by Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Ronseberg, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2006, pp. 443-450.
• “The Soviet Experience of Zionism: Importing Soviet Political Culture to Palestine,” Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 1-33.
• Opennings for Zionist Activity in Soviet Russia in the 1920s, Iyunim bi-tkumat Israel, Volume 14 (Winter 2004), pp. 479-508 (Hebrew).

AWARDS

• Residential Fellowship, Remarque Institute, New York University, 2013-2014
• Daniel Gorenstein Memorial Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement and Exceptional Service to Rutgers University, 2008
• Residential fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University, 2003
• Senior Research Fellow, W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, Columbia University, 1992-1993
• Trustees' Award for Excellence in Research, Rutgers University, 1987
• Research Fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1989), National Endowment for the Humanities (1985), International Research and Exchange Board (1984).
• Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Russian Institute, Columbia University, 1979-1980.

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

• Acting Executive Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, 2006-2008
• Vice-Dean, Graduate School-New Brunswick, 1997-2002
• Chair of History Department & Director of Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 1994-1997, 2003-2006