He is scholar-curator of the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States Collection at Hoover. Among his many awards was being named the Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, the federal government s highest distinction in the field, in 1993. His Reflections on a Ravaged Century will be published by W. W. Norton later this year. You are well known for your work on the legacy of Joseph Stalin and the oppression of the people of the former Soviet Union. In fact, you recently served as a consultant for the Public Broadcasting Service series The Stolen Years , which details the horrors of the Gulag.
Many people today think of Stalin s horrors as long ago and far away.
But in this series, we see and hear survivors of the Gulag, now, today, in the late twentieth century, who are direct links to the system described in late Soviet times in the official government organ as marked by unbearable toil, by cold and starvation, by unheard of degradation and humiliation, by a life which could not have been endured by any other mammal. The word survivor is key. One tells how he was among the 22 of 517 inmates of his camp who lasted through the winter of 1938-39. They tell their stories in warmly personal, relaxed, and outgoing ways. One woman explains that the survivors have very quiet voices.