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Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick

BA Melbourne DPhil Oxf FAHA
Professor

A14 - The Quadrangle
The University of Sydney

Telephone +61 2 9351 2555
Fax +61 2 9351 3918

Biographical details

Sheila Fitzpatrick is primarily a historian of modern Russia, especially the Stalin period, but has recently added a transnational dimension with her research on displaced persons (DPs) after the Second World War. She received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002 and the American Historical Association’s Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2012. She is past President of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (formerly AAASS) and a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Having worked for most of her career in the United States, she moved back to Australia in 2012.

As a historian of twentieth-century Russia, her earlier work focused mainly on Soviet social and cultural history in the Stalin period, particularly social mobility, social identity and everyday practice. Using some of the techniques of her “everyday” work, she has just finished her first major study in political history: On Stalin’s Team: the Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics, which will be published by Princeton University Press in August. My Father’s Daughter, her memoir of her father, the radical historian Brian Fitzpatrick, and her childhood in Melbourne came out in 2010, and she published a memoir of life as a student in Cold War Moscow in the 1960s, A Spy in the Archives in 2012. She is currently co-CI (with Mark Edele) of an ARC-funded project entitled “War, Displacement and Resettlement: SUBTITLE,” as well as working on a more personal DP study based on the correspondence of her late husband, the physicist Michael Danos, and his mother Olga when they were displaced persons in postwar Germany.

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Awards and honours

  • American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction, 2012
  • Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (US)Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, 2012
  • ARC Discovery Project grant (DP130101215), 2013-16, for “War and Displacement: From the Soviet Union to Australia in the Wake of the Second World War” (Sheila Fitzpatrick and Mark Edele, co-Cis)
  • Magarey Medal for Biography for My Father’s Daughter from Australian Historical Association, 2012
  • ARC Discovery Grant (DP120104384), 2012-15: “Rethinking the History of Soviet Stalinism” (Stephen Wheatcroft and Sheila Fitzpatrick, co-Cis)
  • Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, 2008-9
  • Federation Fellowship, 2005 (declined)
  • Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005 - present
  • Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, 2002
  • Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne, 2000-2013
  • President, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1997
  • Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of Humanities, 1996 - present
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Selected grants

2016

  • Post war Russian displaced persons arriving in Australia via the China route; Fitzpatrick S, Balint R, Persian J; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP).

2013

  • War and Displacement: From the Soviet Union to Australia in the Wake of the Second World War; Fitzpatrick S, Edele M; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP).

2012

  • Rethinking the History of Soviet Stalinism; Wheatcroft S, Fitzpatrick S; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP).
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Selected publications

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Books

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). A Spy in the Archives. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2012). Życie codzienne pod rządami Stalina, Rosja radziecka w latach trzydziestych XX wieku. Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). My Father's Daughter. Memories of an Australian Childhood. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2005). Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1994). Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1992). The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1982). The Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

Edited Books

  • Kozlov, V., Fitzpatrick, S., Mitronenko, S. (2011). Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Geyer, M., Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). Beyond Totalitarianism: Nazism and Stalinism Compared. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Rasmussen, C. (2008). Political Tourists: Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Macintyre, S., Fitzpatrick, S. (2007). Against the grain: Brian Fitzpatrick and Manning Clark in Australian history and politics. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Slezkine, Y. (2000). In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2000). Stalinism. London: Routledge.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Gellately, R. (1997). Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Rabinowitch, A., Stites, R. (1991). Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Viola, L. (1990). A Researcher's Guide to Sources on Soviet Social History in the 1930s. Armonk, NY: Routledge.

Book Chapters

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). Afterword. In Choi Chatterjee, David L. Ransel, Mary Cavender, Karen Petrone (Eds.), Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present, (pp. 390-405). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2014). Popular Opinion under Communist Regimes. In S. Smith (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, (pp. 371-386). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2014). Stalin and the World of Culture. In D. Baratieri, M. Edele & G. Finaldi (Eds.), Totalitarian Dictatorship: New Histories, (pp. 64-82). New York: Routledge.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2014). The Cold War as remembered by the children of the Old Left. In Ann Curthoys, Joy Damousi (Eds.), What Did You Do in the Cold War, Daddy? Personal Stories from a Troubled Time, (pp. 264-277). Sydney: NewSouth Publishing.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). Afterword: The Thaw in Retrospect. In Denis Kozlov and Eleonory Gilburd (Eds.), The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s, (pp. 482-491). Canada: University of Toronto Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). Der Tod des Subjekts und seine Folgen. In K. Kucher, G. Thun & S. Urbansky (Eds.), Stille Revolutionen. Die Neuformierung der Welt. Europa seit 1989, (pp. 165-172). Germany: Campus Verlag.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). Política como prática. Uma nova abordagem à história polítca soviética. In B. Monteiro & V. Borges Pereira (Eds.), A política em estado vivo. Uma visão crítica das práticas políticas. Lisbon: Edicoes 70, Lda.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2012). On the Trail of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay: A Russian-Australian Encounter with the Antipodes. In Kate Fullagar (Eds.), The Atlantic World in the Antipodes: Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century, (pp. 166-184). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2012). Things under socialism: the Soviet experience. In Frank Trentmann (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, (pp. 451-466). 2012: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). A World-War-II Odyssey: Michael Danos, en route from Riga to New York. In Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott (Eds.), Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-present, (pp. 252-262). Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). Getting Personal: On Subjectivity in Historical Practice. In A. Ludtke & S. Jobs (Eds.), Unsettling history, (pp. 183-197). Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). The Boss and His Team: Stalin and the Inner Circle, 1925-1933. In Stephen Fortescue (Eds.), Russian Politics from Lenin to Putin. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2009). Popular Opinion in Russia under Pre-war Stalinism. In P. Corner (Eds.), Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). A Short History of Truth and Lies in the Soviet Union from Stalin to Khrushchev. In B. Davis, T. Lindenberger & M. Wildt (Eds.), Alltag, Erfahrung, Eigensinn. historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Ludtke, A. (2008). Energizing the Everyday: On the Breaking and Making of Social Bonds in Nazism and Stalinism. In M. Geyer & S. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism: Nazism and Stalinism Compared. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Journals

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). 'Determined to Get On': Some Displaced Persons on the Way to a Future. History Australia, 12(2), 102-123.
  • Edele, M., Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). Displaced Persons: From the Soviet Union to Australia in the wake of the Second World War - Introduction. History Australia, 12(2), 7-16.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). Impact of the Opening of Soviet Archives on Western Scholarship on Soviet Social History. Russian Review, 74(3), 377-400. [More Information]
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). On Stalin's team: The years of living dangerously in Soviet politics. Juncture, 22(3), 248-251. [More Information]
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). T. H. Rigby Remembered. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 14(2), 367-379.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View. Slavic Review: American quarterly of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, 37(1).
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2007). The Soviet Union in the 21st Century. Journal of European Studies, 37(1).
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2006). Social Parasites: How Tramps, Idle Youth, and Busy Entrepreneurs Impeded the Soviet March to Communism. Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, 47(1).
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2004). Happiness and Toska: A Study of Emotions in 1930s Russia. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 50(3).
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2004). Politics as Practice: Thoughts on a New Soviet Political History. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 5(1).

2015

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). 'Determined to Get On': Some Displaced Persons on the Way to a Future. History Australia, 12(2), 102-123.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). Afterword. In Choi Chatterjee, David L. Ransel, Mary Cavender, Karen Petrone (Eds.), Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present, (pp. 390-405). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Edele, M., Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). Displaced Persons: From the Soviet Union to Australia in the wake of the Second World War - Introduction. History Australia, 12(2), 7-16.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). Impact of the Opening of Soviet Archives on Western Scholarship on Soviet Social History. Russian Review, 74(3), 377-400. [More Information]
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2015). On Stalin's team: The years of living dangerously in Soviet politics. Juncture, 22(3), 248-251. [More Information]

2014

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2014). Popular Opinion under Communist Regimes. In S. Smith (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, (pp. 371-386). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2014). Stalin and the World of Culture. In D. Baratieri, M. Edele & G. Finaldi (Eds.), Totalitarian Dictatorship: New Histories, (pp. 64-82). New York: Routledge.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2014). The Cold War as remembered by the children of the Old Left. In Ann Curthoys, Joy Damousi (Eds.), What Did You Do in the Cold War, Daddy? Personal Stories from a Troubled Time, (pp. 264-277). Sydney: NewSouth Publishing.

2013

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). A Spy in the Archives. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). Afterword: The Thaw in Retrospect. In Denis Kozlov and Eleonory Gilburd (Eds.), The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s, (pp. 482-491). Canada: University of Toronto Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). Der Tod des Subjekts und seine Folgen. In K. Kucher, G. Thun & S. Urbansky (Eds.), Stille Revolutionen. Die Neuformierung der Welt. Europa seit 1989, (pp. 165-172). Germany: Campus Verlag.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). Política como prática. Uma nova abordagem à história polítca soviética. In B. Monteiro & V. Borges Pereira (Eds.), A política em estado vivo. Uma visão crítica das práticas políticas. Lisbon: Edicoes 70, Lda.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2013). T. H. Rigby Remembered. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 14(2), 367-379.

2012

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2012). On the Trail of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay: A Russian-Australian Encounter with the Antipodes. In Kate Fullagar (Eds.), The Atlantic World in the Antipodes: Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century, (pp. 166-184). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2012). Things under socialism: the Soviet experience. In Frank Trentmann (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, (pp. 451-466). 2012: Oxford University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2012). Życie codzienne pod rządami Stalina, Rosja radziecka w latach trzydziestych XX wieku. Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press.

2011

  • Kozlov, V., Fitzpatrick, S., Mitronenko, S. (2011). Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. New Haven: Yale University Press.

2010

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). A World-War-II Odyssey: Michael Danos, en route from Riga to New York. In Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott (Eds.), Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-present, (pp. 252-262). Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). Getting Personal: On Subjectivity in Historical Practice. In A. Ludtke & S. Jobs (Eds.), Unsettling history, (pp. 183-197). Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). My Father's Daughter. Memories of an Australian Childhood. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). The Boss and His Team: Stalin and the Inner Circle, 1925-1933. In Stephen Fortescue (Eds.), Russian Politics from Lenin to Putin. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

2009

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2009). Popular Opinion in Russia under Pre-war Stalinism. In P. Corner (Eds.), Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2008

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). A Short History of Truth and Lies in the Soviet Union from Stalin to Khrushchev. In B. Davis, T. Lindenberger & M. Wildt (Eds.), Alltag, Erfahrung, Eigensinn. historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
  • Geyer, M., Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). Beyond Totalitarianism: Nazism and Stalinism Compared. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Ludtke, A. (2008). Energizing the Everyday: On the Breaking and Making of Social Bonds in Nazism and Stalinism. In M. Geyer & S. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism: Nazism and Stalinism Compared. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S., Rasmussen, C. (2008). Political Tourists: Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View. Slavic Review: American quarterly of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, 37(1).

2007

  • Macintyre, S., Fitzpatrick, S. (2007). Against the grain: Brian Fitzpatrick and Manning Clark in Australian history and politics. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2007). The Soviet Union in the 21st Century. Journal of European Studies, 37(1).

2006

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2006). Social Parasites: How Tramps, Idle Youth, and Busy Entrepreneurs Impeded the Soviet March to Communism. Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, 47(1).

2005

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2005). Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2004

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2004). Happiness and Toska: A Study of Emotions in 1930s Russia. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 50(3).
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2004). Politics as Practice: Thoughts on a New Soviet Political History. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 5(1).

2000

  • Fitzpatrick, S., Slezkine, Y. (2000). In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2000). Stalinism. London: Routledge.

1999

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.

1997

  • Fitzpatrick, S., Gellately, R. (1997). Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

1994

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1994). Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press.

1992

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1992). The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.

1991

  • Fitzpatrick, S., Rabinowitch, A., Stites, R. (1991). Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

1990

  • Fitzpatrick, S., Viola, L. (1990). A Researcher's Guide to Sources on Soviet Social History in the 1930s. Armonk, NY: Routledge.

1982

  • Fitzpatrick, S. (1982). The Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
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