Carolina Seminar • Political Commissar Brezhnev: How War Created a Soviet Man of Peace

Donald J. Raleigh’s research and teaching interests focus on twentieth-century Russian history. As a political and social historian, he wrote extensively on the Russian Revolution, with a particular emphasis on local history (the Saratov region). He also closely followed the evolution of historical writing in the Soviet Union and in this capacity edited the journal Soviet (Russian) Studies in History and the monograph series, The New Russian History. Access to long-sealed Soviet archives shaped his later work on the Russian civil war as did his interest in cultural history. More recently, Professor Raleigh has practiced oral history in the post-WWII period and is currently exploring biography as a historical genre. During the summer of 2011, Professor Raleigh launched research on a biography of Soviet leader Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. Professor Raleigh has since conducted research in Moscow archives as well as in archives in Moldova and Kazakhstan. He also has contributed to a forthcoming publication of Brezhnev’s diaries to be released in Moscow.

Professor Raleigh will be presenting the fourth chapter of his manuscript in progress on Brezhnev. The chapter is entitled Political Commissar Brezhnev: How War Created a Soviet Man of Peace.