Acknowledgements

In: The Moderate Bolshevik
Author:
Charters Wynn
Search for other papers by Charters Wynn in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Free access

Acknowledgements

Many years have passed since I first began to study Tomsky. It is a pleasure to thank the sources of funding for the research and writing of this book I received along the way. From outside the University of Texas at Austin I received a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), a Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies Research Scholarship, and a National Council for Soviet and East European Research Award. Sources of support from within the university included a University Research Institute Grant, a Dean’s Fellowship, and an Institute of Historical Studies Fellowship.

My research took me to various archives and libraries a number of times. In particular, I appreciate all the archivists and staff members who assisted me at the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (RGASPI), the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), and the Hoover Institution Archives. I am also particularly indebted to the Inter-Library Loan staff at the University of Texas Libraries who tracked down nearly everything I requested, no matter how rare or obscure.

All the chapters of this project have benefitted from helpful questions and comments from colleagues at innumerable conferences, including the one I hosted at the University of Texas. I thank Alexis Pogorelskin for turning the papers at that conference into a special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies. Barbara Allen, Clayton Black, and William Chase, among others, offered useful suggestions as commentators on panels at the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies. I have also received helpful feedback on all the various parts of this book at the wonderfully collegial conferences of the Study Group on Revolutionary Russia. In addition, Judith Coffin and Leone Musgrave provided useful feedback on individual chapters, while Lars Lih caught an error in one of my articles on Tomsky. Barbara Allen generously shared some of the notes she took in the Federal Security Service (FSB) archives.

Earlier drafts of parts of this book have been previously published as articles. I am grateful for their editors’ permission to include them here. Part of Chapter 1 appeared in ‘Young Tomsky: The Making of a Working-Class Bolshevik Leader’, Revolutionary Russia, 25, 2: 119–40. Part of Chapter 4 appeared in ‘Getting Together and then Falling Apart: Tomsky and British Trade Unionism during NEP’, Russian Review, 73, 4: 571–95. Part of Chapter 6 appeared in ‘NEP’s Last Stand: Mikhail Tomsky and the Eighth Trade Union Congress’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 53, 1–2: 149–75. And a part of Chapter 7 appeared in ‘The “Right Opposition” and the “Smirnov-Eismont-Tolmachev Affair” ’ in The ‘Lost’ Politburo Stenograms: From Collective Rule to Stalin’s Dictatorship, edited by Paul Gregory and Norman Naimark, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 97–117. I am grateful to all the ‘anonymous’ reviewers who provided editorial suggestions on these earlier drafts, especially Barbara Allen. Two reviewers of the entire manuscript for the Historical Materialism Book Series, one of whom was Clayton Black, also provided helpful comments.

I have been fortunate in the Department of History at the University of Texas to have worked with helpful colleagues and dear friends, especially Judith Coffin, David Crew, Tatjana Lichtenstein, and Michael Stoff. My deepest thanks go to Joan Neuberger, always my first reader and always full of valuable suggestions. She has been my best friend, a wise colleague, and an endless source of encouragement. Together we share a love for our wonderful sons, Max and Joel. It is to them I dedicate this book.

  • Collapse
  • Expand