Andrey Shlyakhter
Lecturer in History
Andrey Shlyakhter is an international historian of the Soviet Union and its neighbors whose work examines how economics, security, and ideology intersect at state frontiers. He received his Ph.D. in December 2020 from the Department of History of the University of Chicago. His comparative dissertation, “Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919-1924,” won the 2021 Ab Imperio Annual Award for Best Dissertation Chapter and was a finalist for the 2022 Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History. His book project, Smuggled Goods, Soviet Borders: Contraband Trade and the Making of the Soviet System, 1917-1930, grows out of this research. Dr. Shlyakhter was the 2024-25 Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ukrainian Politics, Culture, and Society at the University of Toronto, and has been appointed the 2026-27 Temerty Post-Doctoral Fellow in Holodomor Studies at the University of Alberta. Dr. Shlyakhter will join the Harriman Institute in Spring 2026 as a Lecturer in the Discipline of History, offering “Breadbasket, Borderland, Battleground: Economy, Space, and Power in Ukraine, ca. 750 BCE – 2026” (undergraduate) and “Debating the Holodomor” (graduate).
Spring 2026
Andrey Shlyakhter is an international historian of the Soviet Union and its neighbors whose work examines how economics, security, and ideology intersect at state frontiers. He received his Ph.D. in December 2020 from the Department of History of the University of Chicago. His comparative dissertation, “Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919-1924,” won the 2021 Ab Imperio Annual Award for Best Dissertation Chapter and was a finalist for the 2022 Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History. His book project, Smuggled Goods, Soviet Borders: Contraband Trade and the Making of the Soviet System, 1917-1930, grows out of this research. Dr. Shlyakhter was the 2024-25 Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ukrainian Politics, Culture, and Society at the University of Toronto, and has been appointed the 2026-27 Temerty Post-Doctoral Fellow in Holodomor Studies at the University of Alberta. Dr. Shlyakhter will join the Harriman Institute in Spring 2026 as a Lecturer in the Discipline of History, offering “Breadbasket, Borderland, Battleground: Economy, Space, and Power in Ukraine, ca. 750 BCE – 2026” (undergraduate) and “Debating the Holodomor” (graduate).
Spring 2026
