J. Arch Getty

John Archibald Getty, III (born November 30, 1950)[1] is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is noted for his research on Russian and Soviet history, especially the period under Joseph Stalin and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Life and career

Getty was born in Louisiana but grew up in Oklahoma. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and his Ph.D. from Boston College in 1979. Getty was a professor at the University of California, Riverside before moving to UCLA.

Research and ideas

Getty established himself as a forerunner among revisionist historians of the Soviet Union with his first book, Origin of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (Cambridge 1985). Most recently, Getty has published a biography of N.I. Yezhov (2008). He is a controversial figure in the field of Soviet studies, as he was one of the first to put forth the thesis that the Great Purge was planned and commanded not only by Stalin, but by Yezhov and others among Stalin's subordinates as well.[2][3][4] He has studied the Soviet constitutions and elections of the 1930s,[5] as well as the ancient antecedents of Soviet political practices.

Books

Articles

Notes

  1. Date information sourced from Library of Congress Authorities data, via corresponding WorldCat Identities linked authority file (LAF) .
  2. Average Joe: The Return of Stalin Apologists by World Affairs
  3. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage. Encounter Books, 2003. ISBN 1-893554-72-4 pp. 15–17
  4. Timo Vihavainen, "The Yezhovshchina: Premeditated Social Engineering or the Result of Unforeseen Circumstances? Some Objections to J. Arch Getty's Revision of the Great Purges," Nordic Journal of Soviet & East European Studies (1985) 2#3 pp 129-136.
  5. J. Arch Getty, "State and Society under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s," Slavic Review (1991) 50#1 pp 18-35

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, October 14, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.