Robert John Service (born 29 October 1947) is a British post-revisionist historian, academic, and author who has written extensively on the history of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, particularly the period from the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

in 1917 to the death of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

in 1953. He was until 2013 a professor of

Russian history The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' people, Rus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled by Varangians. In 882, Prin ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, a fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a senior fellow at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

's Hoover Institution. He has written biographies of

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

, Stalin, and

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

. Service has been a fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

since 1998.

Career and reception

Service spent his undergraduate years at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied Russian and

classical Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...

. He went to the universities of Essex and of Leningrad for his postgraduate work, and taught at Keele and the

School of Slavonic and East European Studies The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES ) is a University College London#Faculties and departments, school of University College London (UCL) specializing in Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and South-Easte ...

, before joining the University of Oxford in 1998. Between 1986 and 1995, Service published a three-volume biography of

. He wrote several works of general history on 20th-century Russia, including ''A History of Twentieth-Century Russia''. He published a trilogy of biographies on the three most important

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

leaders: ''Lenin'' (2000), ''Stalin'' (2004), and ''Trotsky'' (2009). His biography of Trotsky was strongly criticised by Service's Hoover Institution colleague Bertrand Mark Patenaude in a review for the ''

American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, for which it is an official publication. It targets readers interested in all periods ...

''.McLemee, Scott.
"The Re-Assassination of Leon Trotsky"
''

Inside Higher Ed ''Inside Higher Ed'' is an American online publication of news, opinion, resources, events and jobs in the higher education sphere. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold it to Times Higher Education, itself owned by Inflexion Priv ...

''. 8 July 2011 Patenaude, reviewing Service's book alongside a rebuttal by the Trotskyist David North (''In Defence of Leon Trotsky''), charged Service with making dozens of factual errors, misrepresenting evidence, and "fail ngto examine in a serious way Trotsky's political ideas". Service responded that the book's factual errors were minor and that Patenaude's own book on Trotsky presented Trotsky as a "noble martyr". The book was criticised by Hermann Weber, a German historian of

communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...

who led a campaign to prevent Suhrkamp Verlag from publishing it in Germany. Fourteen historians and sociologists signed a letter to the publishing house. The letter cited "a host of factual errors", the "repugnant connotations" of the passages in which Service deals with Trotsky's

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

origins, implicitly accusing him of

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

, and Service's recourse to "formulas associated with Stalinist propaganda" for the purpose of discrediting Trotsky. Suhrkamp announced in February 2012 that it would publish a German translation of Robert Service's ''Trotsky'' in July 2012. The book won the Duff Cooper Prize in the publication year 2009.

Works

* ''The Bolshevik Party in Revolution 1917–23: A Study in Organizational Change'' (1979) * ''Lenin: A Political Life'' (in three volumes: 1985, 1991 and 1995) * ''A History of Twentieth-Century Russia'' (1997) * ''The Penguin History of Modern Russia From Tsarism to the 21st Century'' (1997) * ''A History of Modern Russia, from Nicholas II to Putin'' (1998, Second edition in 2003) * ''The Russian Revolution, 1900–27'' (Studies in European History) (1999) * '' Lenin: A Biography'' (2000) * ''Russia: Experiment with a People'' (2002) * '' Stalin: A Biography'' (2004), Oxford, 715 pages ill. (2004) * ''Comrades: A World History of Communism'' (2007) * '' Trotsky: A Biography'' (2009) * ''Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West'' (2011) * ''The End of the Cold War: 1985–1991'' (2015) * ''The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution'' (2017) * ''Russia and Its Islamic World'' (2017) *''Kremlin Winter: Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin'' (2019) *''Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924'' (2023)

References

External links

Robert Service's homepage
* *
Robert Service
on ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Service, Robert Robert Service (historian) 1947 births Academics of Keele University Academics of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies Alumni of the University of Essex British anti-communists Fellows of St Antony's College, Oxford Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Historians of Russia Historians of communism Living people Saint Petersburg State University alumni Stalinism-era scholars and writers Writers about the Soviet Union Hoover Institution people 20th-century English historians 21st-century English historians Historians of the University of Oxford Fellows of the British Academy