Andrey Shlyakhter is an international historian of the Soviet Union and its borderlands 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 with the comparative dissertation, “Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919-1924,” which 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 will join the Harriman Institute in Spring 2026 as a Lecturer in the Discipline of History, offering “Breadbasket, Borderland, Battleground: Ukrainian Economy and Society from Rus’ to the Russian Invasions” (undergraduate) and “Debating the Holodomor” (graduate).

Spring 2026