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

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, particularly the era from the

October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mome ...

to Stalin's death. 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' state in the north in 862, ruled by Varangians. Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod became ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a 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 world's second-oldest university in contin ...

, a Fellow of

St Antony's College, Oxford St Antony's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of French merchant Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, St Antony's specialises in international relations, economics ...

, and a senior Fellow at Stanford University's

Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes Economic liberty, personal and economic liberty, Free ...

. He is best known for his biographies of

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

, and

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian M ...

. He has been a fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy 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 same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

since 1998.

Career and reception

Service spent his undergraduate years at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, 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 Archaic peri ...

. He went to

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

and

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

universities for his postgraduate work, and taught at

Keele Keele is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, England. It is approximately three miles (5 km) west of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and is close to the village of Silverdale. Keele lies on the A53 ...

and the

School of Slavonic and East European Studies The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES ) is a school of University College London (UCL) specializing in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia. It teaches a range of subjects, including the histo ...

, before joining

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

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 (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

leaders: ''Lenin'' (2000), ''Stalin'' (2004), and ''Trotsky'' (2009). His biography of Trotsky was strongly criticised by Service's

colleague Bertrand Mark Patenaude in a review for the ''

American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...

''.McLemee, Scott.
"The Re-Assassination of Leon Trotsky"
'' Inside Higher Ed''. 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 him as a "noble martyr". The book was criticised by the German historian of

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society ...

Hermann Weber, 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 ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

origins, implicitly accusing him of

anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...

, and Service's recourse to 'formulas associated with

Stalinist Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...

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 The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, ...

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)

References

External links

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

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Service, Robert 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