Modernisation in Russia since 1900

Markku Kangaspuro is Head of Research of the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. He was formerly the Programme Manager of the Research Programme on ‘Russia in Flux’ of the Academy of Finland, and is Chief Editor of the Finnish Review of East European Studies. He has written extensively on the history of Soviet Karelia in the 1920s and 1930s, and has recently edited Russia: More Different than Most. His current research interests are on the political use of history, contemporary Russian politics, and Russia’s relation to Europeanness.

Jeremy Smith is Senior Lecturer in Russian History at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. He is author of The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917–1923 and The Fall of Soviet Communism, 1985–1991. His published articles cover the nationalities question in the territory of the former Russian Empire ranging from 1905 to the post-Soviet period, and he has also written on education in the late Soviet period. His current research interests are on ethnic conflict in the Caucasus, Khrushchev’s education reforms, and social unrest in the USSR in the 1920s. In 2005 he received awards from the Leverhulme Trust to write a monograph on the nationalities experience in and after the Soviet Union, and from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (with Melanie Ilič and R. W. Davies) for a major research project on the political and economic history of the Khrushchev years.