Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Robert V. ("Bill") Daniels, professor emeritus of history at the University of Vermont (UVM), died in Burlington on 28 March 2010.He was 84 years old.A distinguished scholar of Russian and Soviet political history, Daniels contributed a remarkable 21 books and more than 150 articles that enriched our understanding of Russia.For more than half a century, Daniels was the dean of Soviet studies in northern New England.A pioneer in the study of the Russian revolution and the genesis of the Soviet political system, Daniels was among an early cohort of American scholars to challenge Cold War shibboleths about the Soviet Union, and his work quickly received both national and international attention.His first book, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Russia (I960), was translated into German, Italian, and Japanese editions.Other important works from his early career include The Stalin Revolution: Fulfillment or Betrayal of Communism (1965), which went through four editions, and a seminal history of the Russian revolution, Red October: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (1967).His Documentary History of Communism in Russia (1960), which went through many editions, was adopted for Soviet history courses in universities across the United States.In the second part of his career, Daniels turned his attention away from the revolution to the study of Soviet politics.This work includes The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (1976), Russia: The Roots of Confrontation (1985), and Is Russia Reformable? (1988).Daniels's putative "retirement" in 1988 gave him more time to think and write.He published seven books focusing on contemporary Russian as well as Soviet politics, among diem The End of the Communist Revolution (1993), Russia's Transformation: Snapshots of a Crumbling System (1998), and The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia (2007).Daniels also published outside the field of Russian studies, including The Year of the Heroic Guerilla: World Revolution and Counterrevolution in 1968 (1989) and a work of which he as a linguist was especially proud, Fodor's Europe Talking: A Guide to Nineteen Languages (1975).His oeuvre is characterized by his breadth of knowledge, superb research, acute insights, and elegant prose.His fair-minded and scrupulous approach to Soviet history at the height of the Cold War is especially noteworthy.This body of work received support from the Guggenheim
Source: Slavic Review
Author: Denise J Youngblood
Institution: University of Vermont
Language: English
Topic: Soviet and Russian History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2485962354