Lynne Viola
Professor, Department of History
Affiliated Faculty, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies
Location
Room 112N, 1 Devonshire Place
Biography
Professor Viola is a specialist in 20th century Russian history, focusing on political and social history. Her research interests include gender, rurality, political culture, and violence in the era of Stalin. She is the author of some 30 articles; five books—The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (1987); Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (1996); The War Against the Peasantry, 1927-1930 (2005); The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (2007); and Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (2017); and the editor or co-editor of 18 books–A Researcher’s Guide to Sources of Soviet Social History in the 1930s (1990) (with Sheila Fitzpatrick; Russian Peasant Women (1992) (with Beatrice Farnsworth); Kollektivizatsiia I krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie na Ukraine: noaibr’ 1929-mart 1930
[Collectivization and Peasant Resistance in Ukraine: November 1929-March 1930] (1997) (with Valerii Vasil’ev); Riazanskaia derevnia v 1929-1930 gg.: khronika govokhruzheniia [The Riazan Countryside in 1929-1930: A Chronicle of Dizziness] (1998) (with S. Zhuravlev, T. McDonald, and A. Mel’nik); Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, 1927-1939: dokumenty i materialy, 5 volumes in 6 books [The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside, 1927-1939: Documents and Materials] (1999-2006) (with V.P. Danilov and R.T. Manning); Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (2002); Politbiuro i krest’ianstvo: Vysylka, Spetsposelenie, 1930-1940 [The Politburo and the Peasantry: Exile, Special Settlements, 1930-1940] (2005-6) (with Sergei Krasil’nikov); Chekisty na skam’e podsudimykh [Chekhists on Trial] (2017) (with Marc Iunge and Jeffrey Rossman); and Ekho bol’shogo terrora, 3 volumes in 4 books [Echo of the Great Terror]
, (2017-2019) (with Marc Iunge and Jeffrey Rossman).
Professor Viola holds a cross appointment with the Munk School.
Education
Ph. D Princeton University (1984)
M. A Princeton University (1980)
B.A. Barnard College, Columbia University (1978)
Awards
Canada Council for the Arts: Killam Prize 2019
Royal Society of Canada: 2019 Pierre Chauveau Medal
Canada Council for the Arts: Thomas Henry Pentland Molson Prize 2018
Fellow of the Royal Society, 2014
Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship, 2013-14
University Professorship, 2011
Fowler Hamilton Visiting Research Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford, 2010
Honourable Mention, “Best Book by A Women in Slavic Studies,” Heldt Prize Association of Women in Slavic Studies (for unknown Gulag), 2007
Killam Research Fellowship 2004 and 2005
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2003
Wallace K. Ferguson Prize, Honourable Mention for Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 1997
Dean’s Excellence Award, 1997, 1998 (and other years)
University of Toronto Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award, 1997
Listed in Canadian Who’s Who for 1996-2010
Book prizes
American Association of Ukrainian Studies Book Prize 2018 (for Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial)
Canadian Association of Slavists Book Prize 2018 (for Stalinist Perpetrators on Triall)
Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies: 2018 Reginald Zelnik
Book Prize in History for outstanding monograph published in Russia,
Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the field of history (for Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial)
selected Publications
Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (New York: Oxford U Press, 2017).
The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).
The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside: Stalin’s War Against the Peasantry, tr. Steve Shabad (New Haven: Yale University Press,2005). A volume in Yale’s Annals of Communism series and Yale Agrarian Studies series.
Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Peasant Culture of Resistance (NY: Oxford University Press, 1996).
The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (NY: Oxford University Press, 1987; paperback edition, 1989).
Courses
History of Twentieth-Century Russia
Woman and the Russian Revolution
In the Soviet Archives. Text and History
Everyday Stalinism
Stalinism and After. Beyond Cold War History