Catherine Merridale

Catherine Merridale is a writer and historian with a special interest in Russian history. She was a pioneer of oral history in Russia.^[1]

Biography

Catherine Merridale has a First Class degree in history from King's College, Cambridge and a PhD from the University of Birmingham.^[1]

After a successful academic career, Merridale became a freelance writer in 2014. She has written for the London Review of Books, the New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian, and the Literary Review. She has also contributed to BBC Radio.^[2][3] The author has spoken out publicly about the issues of publishing books in the field of history. There is much more pressure to publish shorter articles than full-length books, a "great shame" according to Merridale, author of multiple history books.^[4]

In an interview with The Independent, Merridale recalls how she became interested in Russia and its past. She began studying Russian in school and first visited the country at the age of 18. She said of her first impression of Russia, "Going from the then ghastly Soviet airport, everything in Moscow was grey and cold and hard. Suddenly in the middle of the city were these golden cupolas and enormous redbrick walls with peculiar swallowtail battlement pattern that didn’t look Russian, but did at the same time."^[5] When she began work on her higher degrees, Merridale spent a year living in Moscow and observing the changes occurring during that time.^[5] In another interview with Waterstones.com, Merridale summarizes her perspective of Russian history, "my message is that we have to take each generation of Russian leaders as they are and not keep assuming that Russia is feted to follow a special path and will always be the same. That there is a Russian destiny." ^[6]

Works

• Merridale, Catherine (1990). Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925-32. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312047991. OCLC 21337606. 
• Merridale, Catherine (2001). Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670894745. OCLC 44573540. 
• Merridale, Catherine (2006). Culture and Combat Motivation. London: Sage Publications. OCLC 67636955. 
• Merridale, Catherine (2006). Ivan's War: life and death in the Red Army, 1939-1945. New York: Metropolitan Books. ISBN 0805074554. OCLC 60671899. 
• Merridale, Catherine (2013). Red fortress: history and illusion in the Kremlin. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Volt and Company. ISBN 0805086803. OCLC 827256860. 

Awards

• Britain's Heinemann Award for Literature for Night of Stone^[3][7][8]
• New York Military Affairs Symposium's Arthur Goodzeit Prize for best book on Military History for Ivan's War^[1][9][10]
• Pushkin House Russian Book Prize for Red Fortress^[11][5]
• Wolfson History Prize for Red Fortress^[12]

References

External links

• Author's Website
• Merridale discusses Red Fortress for the London School of Economics and Political Science and recorded on 9 October 2013 in the Hong Kong Theatre of Clement House
• New York Times review of Ivan's War from April 2006