• Programme: History

Don Filtzer is a specialist in the history of the former Soviet Union, with a particular interest in Soviet labour history.

On the history programme he teaches modules on World History (CC 1404), nineteenth and twentieth century British history (CC 2402 and CC 2404), and twentieth century European history (CC 3403 and CC 3404).

• CC 1404 Globalization and Modernity
• CC 2404 Nation & Empire in a Global Age
• CC 2402 Research Workshop: Britain in the Early Twentieth Century, 1914-1951
• CC 3403 Conflict & Change in the Age of Extremes
• CC 3404 Memory, History, Violence: World War II and its Aftermath

• Don's most recent research focusses on the social and economic history of the Soviet Union during the so-called Late Stalin period, just after World War II.

Publications:

• Soviet Workers & Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System After World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
• “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers in the Immediate Postwar Period, 1945-1948”, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 51, no. 6 (September 1999), pp. 1013-39.
• “Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in der Nachkriegszeit” [Soviet Economy and Society in the Postwar Period], in Stefan Plaggenborg, ed., Handbuch der Geschichte Rußlands, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann-Verlag, 2001), pp. 78-130.
• “Atomization, ‘Molecularization,’ and Attenuated Solidarity: Workers’ Responses to State Repression Under Stalin,” in Brigitte Studer and Heiko Haumann, eds., Stalinistische Subjekte–Stalinist Subjects–Sujet staliniens: Individuum und System in der Sowjetunion und der Komintern, 1929-1953 (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2006), pp. 99-116.
• “From Mobilized to Free Labour: De-stalinization and the Changing Legal Status of Workers” in Polly Jones, ed. The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (Routledge, 2006), pp. 154-69.
• “Standard of Living versus Quality of Life: Struggling with the Urban Environment in Russia During the Early Years of Postwar Reconstruction,” in Juliane Fürst, ed., Late Stalinist Russia: Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention (Routledge, 2006), pp. 81-102.

Recent Unpublished Research Papers:

• “Public and Environmental Health as a Determinant of Working Class Living Standards During Late Stalinism”, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual conference, Pittsburgh, USA, November 2002.
• “Infant Mortality in Soviet Towns and Cities During the Early Postwar Years”, British Association for Slavonic & East European Studies annual conference, Cambridge, March 2003.
• “Atomization, ‘Molecularization,” and Attenuated Solidarity: Workers’ Responses to State Repression Under Stalin.” Conference: “Das Verhältnis von Individuum und System im Stalinismus,” University of Bern, Switzerland, October 2003.
• “The Consumption Crisis of 1947: National Patterns and Local Details,” British Association for Slavonic & East European Studies annual conference, Cambridge, April 2004.
• “Surviving ‘Behind the Lines’ During the Soviet Postwar Reconstruction: Workers’ Access to Housing, Sanitation, and Food,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual conference, Boston, USA, December 2004.
• “The 1947 Food Crisis and Its Aftermath: Worker and Peasant Consumption in non-Famine Regions of the RSFSR.” Conference: “Labour History of Russia and the Soviet Union: Work in Progress,” Amsterdam, International Institute of Social History, March-April 2005. Accessed at: PERSA No. 43
• “Environmental Health in the Regions During Late Stalinism: The Example of Water Supply.” Conference: “The Science, Culture, and Practice of Soviet Medicine: A Symposium on the History of Medicine in the Soviet Union,” University of Wales, Swansea, May 2005. Accessed at: PERSA No. 45
• “Understanding Infant Mortality During Late Stalinism: War, Famine, and the Urban Environment,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual conference, Washington, D.C., November 2006.
• “Poisoning the Proletariat: Urban Water Supply and River Pollution in Russia’s Industrial Regions During Late Stalinism, 1945-1953,” 2007 Summer International Symposium, “Dirty, but Warm: Energy and Environment in Slavic Eurasia and Its Neighborhood,” Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, July 4-6, 2007.
• “The Differential Impact of the 1947 Famine on Russia's Industrial Regions,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual conference, New Orleans, November 14-18, 2007.

Publications:

• Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941 (London: Pluto Press, 1986).
• Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953-1964 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
• The Khrushchev Era: De-Stalinization and the Limits of Reform in the USSR, 1953-1964 (London: Macmillan, 1993). [German edition published as Die Chruschtschow-Ära: Entstalinisierung und die Grenzen der Reform in der UdSSR, 1953-1964 (Mainz, 1995).]
• Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika: The Soviet Labour Process and Gorbachev's Reforms, 1985-1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
• “The Soviet Wage Reform of 1956-1962”, Soviet Studies, vol. xli, no. 1, January 1989, pp. 88-110.
• “The Contradictions of the Marketless Market: Self-Financing in the Soviet Industrial Enterprise, 1986-1990”, Soviet Studies, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 989-1009.
• “Economic Reform and Production Relations in Soviet Industry, 1986-1990” in Chris Smith and Paul Thompson, eds., Labour in Transition: The Labour Process in Eastern Europe and China (London, 1992), pp. 110-48.
• “Industrial Working Conditions and the Political Economy of Female Labour During Perestroika”, in Rosalind Marsh, ed., Women in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 214-27.
• “Labor Discipline, the Use of Work Time, and the Decline of the Soviet System, 1928-1991”, International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 50, Fall 1996, pp. 9-28.
• “Khrushchev i istoriya Sovetskogo Soyuza. Strukturnyi podkhod” [Khrushchev and the History of the Soviet Union: A Structural Approach], in Noveishie podkhody k izucheniyu istorii v sovremennoi zarubezhnoi istoriografii (Yaroslavl', 1997), pp. 52-68.
• “Stalinism and the Working Class in the 1930s”, in John Channon, ed., Politics, Society and Stalinism in the USSR (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 162-84.