Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on May 1, 2025 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a Russian History Kruzhok with Donald Raleigh.
Part of chapter 7 of his current book project, a biography of L. I. Brezhnev, Donald Raleigh’s paper assesses Brezhnev’s 26-month tenure as first secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia between 1950 and 1952, focusing on the problems he encountered in this non-Slavic republic, how he dealt with them, and his leadership style. Drawing on Moldavian archives, Raleigh shows how, despite some temporary setbacks reflecting infighting among Stalin’s would-be successors in Moscow, Brezhnev’s success in running Moldavia, his first such assignment, secured him a coveted, if for now precarious, slot within the USSR’s top leadership.
Interested participants should contact Taylor Zajicek (tcz2107@columbia.edu) for a copy of the paper.
Donald J. Raleigh is the Jay Richard Judson Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His books include “Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov” (1986); “Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922” (2002); and “Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation” (2012).
