The third lecture in the spring 2024 Havighurst Center colloquium series on "Revolutionary Russia."
James Ryan is a historian of modern Russia and the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on the period between the two world wars. His published work is mainly in the intellectual history of Soviet political violence. In it, he seeks to understand how the Soviet state became the most violent and destructive regime in modern peacetime European history. Ryan is also interested in how the Soviet past continues to resonate in the post-Soviet world today, especially in Russia.
