Curriculum vitae

Area of expertise

Comparative transnational history of healthcare in prisons and concentration camps; falsifications of health data by criminal justice bureaucracies and “total institutions”; revision of Gulag morbidity and mortality statistics; the Gulag, the Russian Imperial, and Russian present-day penitentiary systems; judicial and extrajudicial repressions in the late Russian Empire; the Soviet Union, and contemporary Russia; forced labour, exile and transportation; the Soviet secret police (VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB); palliative care, geriatric prisoners and disability in carceral contexts

Education

Specialist (History), Pskov State University (2008)

Post-graduate student, St. Petersburg Institute of History (Russian Academy of Sciences) (2012-2016)

DPhil in history (PhD), University of Oxford (2020)

Thesis Factory of Invalids: Mortality, Disability, and Early Release on Medical Grounds in GULAG, 1930-1955

Professional experience

2015-2016: Associate Researcher on the Carceral Archipelago Project (specialist on the Russian and Soviet penitentiary systems), Funded by the European Research Council (ERC), School of History, University of Leicester, the UK

2019-2023: Postdoctoral Researcher, GULAGECHOES in the “multicultural prison”: historical and geographical influences on the identity and politics of ethnic minority prisoners in the communist successor states of Russia and Europe; Funded by the European Research Council (ERC), Aleksanteri Institute, Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland

Publications

ARTICLES (peer-reviewed)

 1. The GULAG’s Dead Souls: Mortality of the Released Individuals in the Camps, 1930-1955 in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 23, 4 (Fall 2022): pp.803–50

2. The GULAG’s Medical Release:  An Answer to Stephen G.Wheatcroft in Forum: How Deadly Was the Gulag? in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History,  23, 4 (Fall 2022): pp. 873–98

3. The Devil is in the (Statistical) Details: Why Does the Quantitative History of Russian Civil War Incarceration Still Matter in 2021? , Cahiers du monde russe, vol. 63, no. 1, 2022, pp. 205-222

4.“Affirmative action” and terror behind barbed wire: ethnicity construction in the Soviet GULAG, 1930-1955 in Slavic Review (revise and resubmit, 2022)

5. Co-authored with Judith Pallot, Silences and omissions in reporting epidemics in Russian and Soviet Prisons, 1890-2021 in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (Oxford University Press),XX, advance access publication, (Fall 2023):pp.1–22. 

CHAPTERS (peer-reviewed):

1.They Won’t Survive For Long: Soviet Officials on Medical Release Procedure In Rethinking the Gulag: Sources, Identities, Legacies, ed. Alan Barenberg and Emily D. Johnson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022), pp.181-197

2.The GULAG’s Dead Souls: Mortality of the Released Invalids in the Camps, 1930-1955 in Political Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations. ed. Michael David-Fox, Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. Kritika Historical Studies. (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2023): pp.110-151. 
Reprint of Fall 2022 Kritika publication.

BOOK REVEIWS

Review of Golfo Alexopoulos. Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s GULAG. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. 328 pp. in Laboratorium, 12(3) 2020:212–215.

Invited speaker

July 2013: Prison mortality in late Imperial Russia (1885-1915) and the Soviet Union (1930-1945) in a global and national context; Hoover Institution Workshop on Totalitarian Regimes, Stanford University, The USA

May 2019:  “Dead Souls”: mortality, disability, and early release on medical grounds from the GULAG, 1930-1955; Seminar in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, the UK

June 2019: Oxford-Charles University Graduate Workshop in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology - Creative Cities: Knowledge of Nature and Networks of Science, University of Oxford, the UK

April 2022: Rethinking the GULAG: Sources, Identities, Legacies book launch, Columbia University, New York, the USA

May 2022: New approaches to the issue of GULAG mortality, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales; EHESS), Paris, France

BLOG POSTS

 “Archival Counterrevolution”: why are GULAG regional archives so important? (https://peripheralhistories.wixsite.com/mysiteok/blog/archival-counterrevolution-why-are-Gulag-regional-archives-so-important

Bamlag’s lingering shadow (https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/bamlags-lingering-shadow )

Escapes concealing death: the importance of  regional archives for clarification of GULAG death toll

https://blogs.helsinki.fi/gulagechoes/2022/03/24/escapes-concealing-death-the-importance-of-regional-archives-for-clarification-of-gulag-death-toll/  

“The Veil of Secrecy”: How did the Soviet government quell epidemics in prisons? (https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/the-veil-of-secrecy-how-did-the-soviet-government-quell-epidemics)

Prisons and the cholera epidemic of 1892-1893: How the Russian Imperial penal system contained the outbreak (https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/prisons-and-the-cholera-epidemic-of-1892-1893-how-the-russian-imp )

Prisons and the typhus/typhoid epidemic of 1908-1910: How the Russian Imperial penal system contained the outbreak

(https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/prisons-and-the-typhustyphoid-epidemic-of-1908-1910-how-the-russi )

Selected conference presentations

October 2014: Death rates of the Soviet GULAG; Colloquium on the History of Eastern Europe, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany)

November 2015: Crime and Punishment in Russia since the Nineteenth Century; ASEEES, Philadelphia (The USA)

May 2017: “GULAG Forgotten Victims”: early release on medical grounds 1930-1953; Russia’s Long Century: Identity, Empire, and Nationhood conference, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford (The UK)

November 2017: “Hidden GULAG Death Rates”: early release on medical grounds, 1930-1955; ASEEES, Chicago (The USA)

December 2017: “Death On The Way Home”: the experiences of GULAG invalids after early release, 1930-1955; 2nd International Conference for Carceral Geography, University of Birmingham (The UK)

February 2018: The Carceral Archipelago: Transnational Circulations in Global Perspective; end of project conference, School of History, University of Leicester (The UK)

April 2018: Medical release and mortality statistics in the GULAG; European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC), Queen’s University (Northern Ireland, The UK)

January 2019: Oxford History and Social Science Workshop, University of Oxford (The UK)

April 2019: “They Won't Survive For Long”: Soviet officials on medical release procedure, BASEES, University of Cambridge (The UK)

April 2020: “Dead Souls”: Mortality, disability, and early release on medical grounds from the GULAG, 1930-1955; Political police and the Soviet system virtual conference (Jacques Rossi Memorial Fund for GULAG Research, Georgetown University (the USA)

August 2021: “Southerners in the Northern Camps”: The ethnic facet of GULAG morbidity and mortality registration in 1930-1955; Ethnic, Religious, and Cultural Tensions in the GULAG and Its Successors, ICCEES 10^th World Congress (Montréal, Canada)

April 2022:  “Affirmative action” and terror behind barbed wire: ethnicity construction in the Soviet GULAG, 1930-1955; BASEES, University of Cambridge (the UK)

Impact activities

Invited expert and interviewee in the War Factories Documentary, episode 8 “Russia” (2019, Yesterday channel, UKTV, BBC Studios)

Interview with MTV Uutiset about the Gulag and Russian prisons (2023)

Language proficiency

Russian (native); English (fluent)

Teaching experience

Tutored undergraduate students at the History Faculty, University of Oxford (Further Subject: The Soviet Union 1924-1941), 2019

Research interests

Area of expertise

Comparative history of penal medicine, the GULAG, the Russian imperial prisons, mortality statistics in prisons, ethnic relations in penal systems