• Programme: Global Studies (International Development, International Politics)

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

• AI2309 -- Social Movements and Radical Politics in the Twentieth Century

Don is a specialist in the social and economic history of the former Soviet Union.  His main body of research has been in Soviet labour history, and more recently in the history Soviet medicine and public health.  Over the past decade he has been doing detailed research into workers’ health and living conditions during World War II and the late Stalin period.

Publications:

Books: 

Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System After World War Two (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2002). 

Sovietskie rabochie i pozdnii Stalinizm: Rabochii klass i vosstanovlenie stalinskoi sistemy posle okonchaniya Vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Rosspen, 2011).  Translation of Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism. 

Donald Filtzer, Wendy Goldman, Gijs Kessler, and Simon Pirani, eds., A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008). 

The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943-1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Articles and Book Chapters: 

“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. 

“Les ouvriers et les communistes durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et l’après-guerre”, in Michel Dreyfus, et. al., eds., Le Siècle des Communismes (Paris: Les Editions de l’Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 2000), pp. 180-6.

“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. 

“Lavoro,” in Silvio Pons and Robert Service, eds., Dizionario del communismo nel XX secolo, vol. I (Turin, 2006), pp. 494-7. 

“Operai,” in Silvio Pons and Robert Service, eds., Dizionario del communismo nel XX secolo, vol. II (Turin, 2007), pp. 93-8. 

“The 1947 Food Crisis and Its Aftermath: Worker and Peasant Consumption in Non-Famine Regions of the RSFSR,” in Donald Filtzer, Wendy Goldman, Gijs Kessler, and Simon Pirani, eds., A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 343-83. 

“Poisoning the Proletariat: Urban Water Supply and River Pollution in Russia’s Industrial Regions During Late Stalinism, 1945-1953,” Acta Slavica Iaponica, vol. 26 (2009), pp. 85-108. 

“Environmental Health in the Regions During Late Stalinism: The Example of Water Supply,” in Frances Bernstein, Christopher Burton, and Daniel Healy, eds., The Science, Culture, and Practice of Soviet Medicine (Dekalb:  Northern Illinois Press, 2010), pp. 214-36. 

“Die Auswirkungen der sowjetischen Hungersnot im Jahr 1947 auf die Industriearbeiter,” in Mathias Middell and Felix Wemheuer, eds., Hunger, Erhährung, und Rationierungssysteme under dem Staatssozialismus (1917-2006), (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 59-85. 

“The Impact of the 1947 Soviet Famine on Industrial Workers,” in Mathias Middell and Felix Wemheuer, eds., Hunger and Scarcity Under State-Socialism (Leipzig: Leipzig University Press, 2012), pp. 303-32.  English version of “Die Auswirkungen der sowjetischen Hungersnot.” 

“Privilege and Inequality in Communist Societies,” in S. A. Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2013, online version January 2013). 

Conference Presentations: 

“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. 

“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. 

“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, 4-6 July, 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, 14-18 November, 2007. 

“The Impact of the 1947 Soviet Famine on Industrial Workers,” international workshop, “Hunger, Nutrition and Systems of Rationing under State Socialism (1917-2006)” University of Vienna, Institute for East Asian Studies, 23-25 February, 2008.

“The Impact of Food Shortages on Russia’s Public Health, 1942-1947: Evidence from the Medical Literature,” British Association for Slavonic & East European Studies annual conference, Cambridge, March 2008. 

“Marxism and the Study of the Stalinist System,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual conference, Philadelphia, 20-23 November 2008. 

“The Problem of Individual and Class in Stalinist Society,” conference, “The History of Stalinism,” Moscow, 5-7 December 2008.

“The Banya and Public Health During Late Stalinism,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual conference, Boston, 12-15 November 2009. 

“The Role of ‘Class’ in Understanding the Nature of Soviet Society,” European Social Science History Conference, Ghent, April 2010. 

“Labour ‘Desertion’ in Soviet Defence Industry During World War II,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies annual conference, Los Angeles, 18-21 November 2010. 

“An Analysis of Starvation Mortality in Soviet Home Front Regions During World War II,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies annual conference, Washington, D.C., 17-20 November 2011. 

“The Politics of Workers’ Health in Soviet Defence Industry,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies annual conference, New Orleans, 15-18 November 2012. 

“Starvation Mortality in Soviet Home-Front Industrial Regions During World War II,” conference, “World War II, Nazi Crimes, and the Holocaust in the Soviet Union,” Moscow, 7-9 December 2012.

Recent Research Grants:

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to support research on the topic, “Soviet Labour and World War II,” February 2009-September 2009.

Wellcome Trust Research Leave Fellowship, “Health, Disease, and Mortality on the Soviet Home Front During World War II,” September 2009-August 2012.

American Council of Learned Societies Collaborative Research Fellowship (with Prof. Wendy Z. Goldman, Carnegie Mellon University, USA), “The Soviet Home Front: Work, Life, and Loyalty During World War II,” 1 September 2012-31 December 2012.

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.