Monday, November 16th, 2009 Stalin’s Foreign and Domestic Policies: Dealing with the National Question in an Imperial Context, 1901-1926

Description

Using Stalin’s Works, the talk will explore the role played by the linkage between the national question, and national policies, and international relations in the evolution of Stalin’s foreign policy conceptions between 1901 and 1926. The analysis will proceed by temporal blocks linked to Stalin’s formative stages and activities. It will sketch the categories Stalin adopted, or personally elaborated, during each block, and follow their evolution in the following stages. The relevance of Stalin’s experience in dealing with the national question in the Tsarist and Soviet contexts in the formation of his “inter-national” ideas and strategies, as well as that of these ideas and strategies for Stalin “high” foreign policy, 1939-1953, will be discussed.

Andrea Graziosi is Professor of History at the University of Naples “Federico II” and President (2007-2011) of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History (www.sissco.it). He is the author, among other things, of “Lettere da Kharkov” (Torino, Einaudi, 1991 and Kharkiv, 2007), “The Great Soviet Peasant War” (Cambridge, MA, 1996 and Moscow, 2001), “Bol’ševiki i krest’iane na Ukraine, 1918-1919” (Moscow, AIRO-XX, 1997), “A New, Peculiar State. Explorations in Soviet History” (Westport, CT, 2000), “Guerra e rivoluzione in Europa 1905-1956” (Bologna, 2002, Kyiv and Moscow, 2005), “L’Urss di Lenin e Stalin, 1914-1945” (Bologna, 2007) and “L’Urss dal trionfo al degrado, 1945-1991” (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008). He serves in Editorial Boards of a number of French, English, Italian, Ukrainian and U.S. specialized journals, co-edits in Moscow, since 1992, the series “Dokumenty sovetskoi istorii” (15 volumes in print) and is a member of the editorial board of the series Istoriia Stalinizma (Rosspen, Moscow).