Hale-Dorrell, Aaron

Aaron Hale-Dorrell is a historian of the Soviet Union. In 2014, he completed his dissertation, “Khrushchev’s Corn Crusade: The Industrial Ideal and Agricultural Practice in the Era of Post–Stalin Reform, 1953–1964,” and earned his PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill. His book manuscript, based on his PhD dissertation, is the first archive-based history of Nikita Khrushchev’s corn campaign, which it examines through the lens of the global development of industrial agriculture. Challenging entrenched notions that this was merely a “harebrained scheme,” the inquiry delves deeper than traditional explanations based on the crop’s unfamiliarity and unsuitability to the climate, and thereby brings to light new findings about the rural side of governance, society, and economic life in the USSR. His other research interests include the history of industrial food processing, and a new research project that examines the experiences of buyers and sellers in the legal farmers’ markets that dotted the cities of the Soviet Union after World War II.

CSEEES Tenure: 2/2015 to 6/2017 | EMAIL •  LINKEDIN • TWITTER