Matthew Lenoe

Professor of History University of Rochester

  • Rochester NY

Matthew Lenoe is a national expert in Russian/Soviet history.

Contact

University of Rochester

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Areas of Expertise

Russian History
Russia
History of Mass Media
Soviet Soldiers in World War II
Stalinist Culture and Politics
Russian and Soviet
Leninism
Russia in East Asia
Russia and the former Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin

Social

Biography

Matthew Lenoe's first book, "Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution and Soviet Newspapers," which examined the origins of high Stalinist culture, including Socialist Realist literature, in the newspaper press of the 1920s, was published by Harvard University Press in 2004. His second, "The Kirov Murder and Soviet History," which used new archival documents on the Kirov murder to demonstrate that Stalin was not involved in orchestrating the murder, came out with Yale University Press, in 2010.

Education

University of Chicago

PhD

Russian History

1997

University of Chicago

MA

Russian History

1993

University of Chicago

BA

General Studies in the Humanities

1988

Selected Media Appearances

It’s time to do away with laws enforcing triumphal national histories

Washington Post  print

2019-04-17

Matthew Lenoe says such ‘memory laws’ have become weapons for right-wing nationalists

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Russian Soldiers Are Complaining On Social Media – In The Past, Would They Have Been Shot?

Forbes  online

2023-11-11

"The negative comments included hints of the desperate military situation, accounts of hunger, cold, homesickness, poor weapons, insomnia, and the like," explained Dr. Matthew E. Lenoe, associate professor of history at the University of Rochester, and author of the book Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution and Soviet Newspapers.

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EU leaders pledge increased military aid for Ukraine — live updates

MSN News  online

2022-03-11

University of Rochester's Matthew Lenoe called Russia's invasion of its neighbor "a brutal act of aggression with absolutely no justification."

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Selected Articles

Fear, Loathing, and Conspiracy: The Kirov Murder as Impetus for Terror

Oxford University Press

Matthew Lenoe

2013-07-01

It is generally agreed that in the period 1936–9 there were several distinct waves of terror. The chapter discusses the Kirov assassination of December 1934 as a precipitant of the terror against the former opposition and the elite in general. The assassination surprised Stalin, who was not its organizer, and turned his long-time fear of assassination and conspiracy and mistrust of the police into a rage that became the pretext for his terror against opponents: real, imagined, and possible.

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Khruschchev Era Politics and the Investigation of the Kirov Murder

Acta Slavica Iaponica

Matthew Lenoe

2007-01-01

The assassination of Sergei Kirov, Leningrad party chief, on December 1, 1934, was a political sensation inside and outside the USSR. Although the killer, a disgruntled Communist named Leonid Nikolaev, insisted in early interrogations that he had acted alone, Soviet police could not accept this. In a Soviet culture where even rotten vegetables on store shelves could signal counterrevolutionary sabotage, investigators interpreted the murder as a conspiracy by hostile capitalist powers, internal “class enemies,” or both.

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In Defense of Timasheff’s Great Retreat

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

Matthew Lenoe

2004-01-01

In a number of commentaries, Nicholas Timasheff has been raked over the coals. It is an easy game to take apart a work that was written 60 years ago without access to archives or even much firsthand reporting from inside the USSR other than the Soviet press itself. Lenoe believes that Timasheff deserves better.

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