Everyone has his or her own reason for studying a particular region and a particular historical period. Your attraction to Russia may have arisen out of a desire to add an "East" to the dominant "West" in European history; interest in Communism or the Orthodox Church; a fascination with multinational land empires or the landscape of the taiga; family roots in the Russian Empire; reading Dostoevsky or listening to Shostakovich; admiration for Faberge eggs or onion domes, or even a liking for snow and cabbage soup. Whatever the initial reason, the only justification for studying Russian or any other kind of history is that you really want to find out about it and think you have some talent for searching, digging, and posing historical questions.
We have one of the largest and most successful graduate programs in Russian/Soviet history in North America, with particular emphasis on the Muscovite period and the twentieth-century Russia. To check this claim out, look not only at the publication records of the professors but also at the record of academic placement and publications of young scholars who have recently gone through the program, as well as the range of dissertation topics of current students, The Russian Studies Workshop and the two Russian history seminars, offered in alternate years, are the vital centers of the Russian history program. We also work closely with the Modern Europeanists. Our program will be particularly lively in the years 2003/4 - 2005/6 because of the unusually large number of conferences, workshops, and other events that will be funded out of Prof. Fitzpatrick's recent Distinguished Achievement Award from the Mellon Foundation, which also expands our possibilities of supporting student research trips to Russia. Thanks to Prof. Hellie's efforts, the University of Chicago's Russian and East European program is the recipient of FLAS awards for graduate students under Title VI. In the fall of 2003, Prof. Ronald Suny, a distinguished specialist on empire and nationality as well as a Russian social historian, formerly a member of the Department of Political Science and associate member of the History Department, becomes a full member of the History Department.