Prof. Dr. Gabriel Gorodetsky

CV

Born 1945; 1969 BA in History and Russian Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem; 1974 MA and Dr. phil. in Russian Studies at Oxford University; 1974-2006 Professor of History, Department of History, Tel Aviv University, Israel; 1986-1987 Fellow, The Wilson Center, Washington, DC; 1989-1998 Founder and Director, The Cummings Center for Russia; 1993-1994 Visiting Fellow, St. Antony' College, Oxford; 1993-2008 Editor, The Cummings Center Series; 1991-2 and 1994-5 President, Israeli Association of Slavic and East European Studies; 1996- Incumbent of  The Samuel Rubin Chair of Russian and East European History and Civilization, Tel Aviv University; 1998-2001 Director of the Curiel Center for International Studies, Tel Aviv University; 2001-2002 Guest Professor, Koeln University; 2001-2006 Studies, Tel Aviv University; 2002-2003 Eric-Voegelin Visiting Professor, Munich University; 2005-2006 Visiting Fellow, All Souls, Oxford; Autumn, 2007 Resident, the Rocefeller Bellagio Research Center; 2008-2010 Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford; 2010 Honorary Doctorate, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow; 1.10.011-1.8.2012 FRIAS fellowship

PUBLICATIONS (selection)

• Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (Yale, University Press, 1999), also in French (Belles Lettres), German (Siedler), Hebrew (Ma’arachot), Russian (Rospen).
• Stafford Cripps in Moscow, Diary and Letters, 1940-42 (Cass, 2008).
• Russia between East and West: Russian Foreign Policy on the Threshold of the 21st Century (Cass, London, 2003)
• et.al. initiator and co-editor, Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 1941-1953 (2 vols.) (Cass, London, 2000).
• Mif Ledokola (Moscow, Progress, 1995) (In Russian: The Icebreaker Myth).
• The Precarious Truce: Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1924-1927 (Cambridge University Press, 1977, reprinted 2008).
• Stafford Cripps' Mission to Moscow, 1940-1942 (Cambridge University Press, 1984, reprinted, 2001)
• “Geopolitical Factors in Stalin’s Strategy and Politics in the Wake of the Outbreak of World War II” in Andrea Romano (ed.) Russia in the Age of Wars (Feltrinelli, Milano, 2000).
• “Ivan Maisky: The Communist and the King”, New York Review of Books, LVIII/7, 28 Apr. 2011.
• “Maisky – A Soviet diplomat of the Old School”, in IVO Encyclpaedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (Yale University Press, 2008).

FRIAS research project

"From Appeasement to the Grand Alliance: The Publication of the Diary of Ivan Maisky, Soviet Ambassador to England, 1932-1943."

Stalin’s terrror and purges of the 1930s discouraged high Soviet officials from putting a pen to paper let alone keeping personal records ad above all diaires. A sole exception is the rare and unique diary, assidiously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London in 1932-43, which I unearthed in the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow. It comprises over 1,600 pages of dense hand-written and typed entries, minutely and candidly depicting the activities, conversations, astute observations and thoughts of the ubiquitous Soviet ambassador in London. The work will be heavily annotated, juxtaposing his entries with his own private papers and correspondence, records left by his interlocutors and official reports of his encounters from the Russian British, French, American and Russian archives. The diary will be published by Yale University Press in three volumes and a single compendium volume. It will shed fresh light on the crucial period of appeasement, the negotiations leading to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the German Invasion of Russia and the forging of the Grand Alliance.