2005 April 01

(Robert) Alan Kimball
History Department
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon 97403

Office telephone: (541) 346-4813
Home telephone: (541) 345-0281
FAX: (541) 346-4895
[ kimball@uoregon.edu ]

BASICS

1967: PhD, University of Washington, History (modern Russia, medieval Russia, Byzantium, French Revolution)

1963: MA, University of Washington, Russian Area Studies (modern and medieval Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet economy, Marxism)

1961: BA with Honors, University of Kansas, Political Science-International Relations (Russian area emphasis: history, philosophy, literature, politics and economics)

1938 December 19: Born, Yukon, Canadian County, Oklahoma

 

APPOINTMENTS
  • Current: Associate Professor of History
  • 1995-2004: Director of the UO Russian and East European Studies Center (REESC) elected by REESC in 1995 May. Founding member since 1967; Executive Board (1968-69, 74-78), Chairman (1973-74)
  • 1998-2002: Elected first Chair of the Executive Board of the newly created UO International Programs Council which draws together International Studies, Asian Studies, European Studies, Latin American Studies and REESC (these the five degree and/or certificate-granting international programs on campus)
  • 1996-1998: Elected to UO Senate (earlier Senate service: 1990-92 and 1977-78). Member, Senate Rules Committee (1977-78)
  • 1992-1995: Chairman, Russian Department (elected by the Department)
  • 1988 Fall: First Visiting Honors Professor in the History Department of The United States Naval Academy, Annapolis. 1998 Fall: Invited to return as member of History Department Review Committee
  • 1987 May: Fellow at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, DC
  • 1986-87: Visiting Foreign Research Scholar at the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University, in Sapporo, Japan. Hokkaido houses the Japanese national Slavic research center which each year invites two scholars from around the world to join their research faculty
  • 1978-84: Director, Robert Donald Clark Honors College and Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, UO
  • 1981-82: President, Western Regional Honors Council (WRHC), an affiliate of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC member, 1978-84)
  • 1976-77: Research Specialist, attached to the Department of History, Moscow State University, USSR (1972-73 also)
  • 1965-67: Instructor of History in the Western Civilization Program, Stanford University

 

CURRENT RESEARCH

I am writing a ca. 700 page MS which bears the working title To Make a Better Life: The Mobilization of Political Opposition in the Russian Empire, 1859-1863. It is a computer-assisted study of several dozen social organizations and their members in the middle of the nineteenth century, a period called the "Era of Great Reforms" or "First Russian Revolutionary Situation".

In connection with a History Department project to bring World Wide Web opportunities into our classes [see below], I am also at the beginning of a project to put on the internet the datafiles generated in the process of completing the project described just above. The biographical and group datafiles amount to something like 12 million typewriter strokes of highly coded data gathered from Russian libraries and archives. These datafiles are destined for this site.

  • 2006 Summer: Research in Moscow. I took this opportunity to arrange two interviews with petroleum industry administrators (in connection with my on-going interest in the problem of Russian and global energy politics): (1) a Vice President of Chevron’s Russian operations stationed in Moscow, and (2) a Vice President of BP stationed in Aberdeen, Scotland.
  • 2004 Summer: Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences international conference on "Hierarchy and Power", presented paper on "Political Advice from Urban Activists to Russian Villagers in Proclamations of the Great Reform Era"
  • 2002 Summer: Presented paper on the peasant kabak [tavern] and emergence of a Russian “civil society” and worked in the Tenishev Archive at the Rossiiskii etnograficheskii musei [Russian ethnographic musuem]
  • 1999 Fall: Research in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia. Consulted with professors Larisa Zakharova and Boris Mironov about chapters from the MS described above
  • 1998 November 7: I presented report to the Northwest Scholars of Russian and Soviet History and Culture [NWS] of on one aspect of this project, “The Tsarist State and the Origins of Revolutionary Opposition in the 1860s”
  • 1995 Summer: In the Amsterdam Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis as well as in Pushkinskii Dom, the State Historical Archives, and the Public Library in Petersburg
  • 1992 Summer: In the collections specified just above, and made scholarly excursions to several historical sites across northern Russia with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, attached to the St.Petersburg Ermitazh Museum
  • 1983-1989 (6 years): Research group devoted to Russian provincial history, specifically Saratov Province. We organized an international conference of US and Soviet historians at the University of Illinois Russian and East European Center, July 1985, co-sponsored by NEH. The group also met in conjunction with the Third World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies in Washington, DC, November, 1985. Our book on Saratov appeared in the fall of 1989

I have been invited to lecture on my research at universities and academies in the USA, Japan, China, Germany and Russia

RECENT RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS (since 1988)

  • 2007 Fall: [in press] “Pre-Soviet Russian Concepts of Civil Society and Their Legacy”, a twelve-page chapter in an anthology published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations (Moscow: Uchitel’ Press). The text of the public presentation on which this chapter is based can be read in KIMBALL FILES
  • 2004 Fall:Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’ 6:137-146 [Social Sciences and Modernity, the journal of the social-science divisions of the Russian Academy of Sciences], “Derevenskii kabak kak vyrazhenie russkoi grazhdanskoi obshchestvennosti, 1855-1905 gg.” [Village tavern as an expression of Russian civil society, 1855-1905. An English-language version can be read in KIMBALL FILES]
  • 2003 Winter: “Aleksei Pleshcheev”, a 5000-word essay in Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 277 [an abbreviated version of this article is in KIMBALL FILES]
  • 2003 Winter: “Who Were the Petrashevtsy?”, a 25-page website article, selected for linkage on the Japan Council of Russian and East European Studies website
  • 2002 February: KIMBALL FILES website essay “The Tsarist State and the Origins of Revolutionary Opposition in the 1860s” chosen by content selections team of ProQuest “History online” (England) to appear on an internet Study Unit page about Alexander II of Russia
  • 1994: "Intelligentsia." In Peter N. Stearns, ed., Encyclopedia of Social History. New York: Garland Publishing. Pages 355-6 [an abbreviated version of this article is in KIMBALL FILES]
  • 1992: "Russkoe grazhdanskoe obshchestvo i politicheskii krizis v epokhu Velikikh Reform, 1859-1863" [Russian Civil Society and the Political Crisis in the Epoch of Great Reforms, 1859-1863]. In Larisa Zakharova, et al., eds., Velikie reformy v Rossii 1856-1874. Moscow: Moscow State University Press. Pages 260-282 [an abbreviated version of this article is in KIMBALL FILES]
  • 1992: "Alexander Herzen and the Native Lineage of the Russian Revolution." In Religious and Secular Forces in Late Tsarist Russia. Edited by Charles E. Timberlake. Seattle WA: The University of Washington Press. Pages 105-27 and 321-7
  • 1991 Summer: "Weber and Russia." Telos 88 (Summer 1991):187-95 (with co-author Gary Ulmen, Associate Editor of the journal Telos); based on the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe devoted to the 1905 Revolution in Russia
  • 1990 Fall: "The Russian Peasant Obshchina in the Political Culture of the Era of Great Reforms: A Contribution to Begriffsgeschichte." Russian History/Histoire Russe 17:259-79 [an abbreviated version of this article is in KIMBALL FILES]
  • 1990: "Introduction" [on the role of women (Olga and Anna) in the Christianization of Rus']. In Russia and the Millennium (A.D. 988-1988). Crestwood NY: Saint Vladimir's Press. Pages 1-11 [an abbreviated version of this article is in  KIMBALL FILES]
  • 1989: "Conspiracy and Circumstance in Saratov, 1859-1864." Chapter 3 (pp. 28-48) of Politics and Society in Provincial Russia: Saratov, 1590-1917. Edited by Rex A. Wade and Scott J. Seregny. Columbus OH: The Ohio State University Press. In 1991 this chapter was translated by the Saratov Regional History Society. In June, 1991, the society held a conference devoted in part to this publication
  • 1989 Summer: "The Marketing of Perestroika." Telos 80: 169-176
  • 1988: "Student Interests and Student Politics: Kazan University before the Crisis of 1862." Acta Slavica Iaponica (Sapporo) 6:1-15. 1989: The Institut nauchnoi informatsii po obshchestvennym naukam of the Soviet Academy of Sciences published a Russian-language conspectus of this essay in Referativnyi zhurnal: obshchestvennye nauki za rubezhom, Series 5: "Istoriia", index 89.05.010 (Moscow:1989):46-49
  • 1988: "Literary Fund: from 1859 to the Present Day." Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History [MERSH] 49:236-9
  • 1988: "Revolutionary Situation in Russia (1859-1862)." MERSH 31:54-57
  • 1988: "Who Were the Petrashevtsy? A Question Provoked by some Recent Scholarship." Mentalities/mentalités 5, no. 2:1-12. Featured on Slavic-Eurasian Studies Web | Russian history section (site maintained by the Japan Council of Russian and East European Studies)

MOST RECENT REVIEWS

  • 2007 Winter: Slavic Review, review of Gesellschaft als lokale Veranstaltung: Selbstverwaltung, Assoziierung und Geselligkeit in den Städten des ausgehenden Zarenreiches forthcoming
  • 2005 Winter: Slavic Review, review of I. A. Khristoforov, "Aristokraticheskaia" oppozitsiia Velikim reformam, konets 1850 -- seredina 1870-kh gg.
  • 2004 Summer: Slavic Review, review of Peter Julicher's Renegades, Rebels and Rogues under the Tsars (2004)
  • 1999 review of Andrei Sinyavsky's The Russian Intelligentsia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), H-NET

PEDAGOGICAL PUBLICATIONS
  • 1998 Fall: Composed pedagogical website, including A Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography [SAC]
  • 1997 Fall: Composed 260-page Oregon Russian and East European Studies Center website (with the technical assistance of Paul Schroder)
  • 1997 February 3:The Oregonian. "Russia and the U.S.: Yeltsin’s ineffectiveness, NATO expansion plans bode ill for democracy" [an editorial column invited by the Oregon World Affairs Council and the editorial staff of The Oregonian], based on speech prepared for the Oregon "Great Decisions" program
  • 1984: "The United States and the Soviet Union: Toward a Mutual Pacific Frontier." Oregon and the Pacific Rim (Portland, OR):5-6
  • 1984 Fall: "Writing with Computers: Preface to a Plan to Teach a Course Called 'Writing History with a Computer'." PNWC Papers: Pacific Northwest Writing Consortium Newsletter 4,2:6-10
  • 1983 Fall: "The Place of Honors in Publicly Financed Higher Education." Forum For Honors [Publication of the National Collegiate Honors Council] 14,1:17-37
  • 1982 March-April: "Integration of Writing with History: One Episode and Some Generalizations." PNWC Papers: Pacific Northwest Writing Consortium Newsletter 2,2:3-5
  • 1979: "Russia and the Unnamed Revolution" and "Scientism: Attitudes toward Science through History", two thirty-minute discussions contracted and video-taped by the Eugene Public Library, and circulated there
  • 1979 Spring: "Living and Working in Russia." Old Oregon 58,3:9-13
  • 1974: "The First World War and the Russian Revolution." Pacifica Cassette on History (B. B. 1743)

 

RECENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

  • 2006 Summer: Moscow, Russia, at the fourth international conference on "Hierarchy and Power" sponsored by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Presented paper on pre-Soviet Russian activists and theorists of "Civil Society" and their legacy. On the basis of this presentation, I was asked to become “outside member” of a Russian PhD candidate’s thesis committee (devoted to problems of contemporary “civil society” in Russia). And I have recently (2006 Fall) accepted the Russian Academy of Sciences invitation to submit for publication an article-length manuscript based on my presentation
  • 2004 Summer: Moscow, Russia, at the third international conference on "Hierarchy and Power" sponsored by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Presented an aggregate analysis of the political advice which Russian urban activists offered villagers in about 100 proclamations composed in the middle of the 19th century.
  • 2002 Summer: St.Petersburg, Russia, at the second international conference on "Hierarchy and Power" sponsored by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Presented a paper on peasants in Russian civil society
  • 1999 December 11: Seminar of the Zentrum für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas at the Free University of Berlin, "Geselligkeit, Öffentlichkeit und Zivilgesellschaft: Westeurope und Rußland/SU im Vergleich (19./20. Jh.)", an invited presentation on "The Village Kabak [tavern] in the History of Russian Civil Society"
  • 1998 September: Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, organized panel on "Russian Civil Society in Its Infancy" and wrote critiques of the three papers presented to the panel
  • 1998 April 11: Fourth Annual Regional Conference of the University of Washington Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies [REECAS], chaired session titled "Economic Transitions in Russia" and presented paper, "Russia and Natural Gas in a New Era of International Commerce"

 

RECENT PUBLIC AND OTHER PEDAGOGICAL PRESENTATIONS

  • 2007 Spring: UO Schnitzer Museum of Art hosted a public symposium. Illustrated presentation on "Russian Ways of Seeing = Sacred and Secular", devoted to the mosaics, paintings, tiles, sculptures and other decorative features of the fabled Moscow METRO, the Circle Line. related to long-term trends of Russian art, not ignoring holy icons (such as are on display at the Schnitzer)
  • 2006 April: University of Oregon Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Presentation with internet projection, on the connections between life and work for American scholars in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia
  • 2005 Spring: Three Town-Gown presentations (sponsored by UO REESC) on the topic "Russian History through Film", the first on Igor Talankin’s "Tschaikovsky", the second on Vladimir Petrov’s "Peter the First", and the third on Klimov’s "Agony: Rasputin". KIMBALL FILES posts two long narratives about the Petrov and Klimov films
  • 2005 January: "Peter Tchaikovsky and the Russian Golden Age", a series of presentations on the invitation of the Eugene OR Symphony Orchestra and the Hult Center, in connection with their Tchaikovsky festival
  • 2000 April 11: "Vladimir Putin: A New Direction for Russia?", a presentation to the "Learning in Retirement" program in Eugene
  • 2000 March 9: Presentation on the Stroganov family at the Portland Art Museum
  • 1999 November 18: "Anarchism", a presentation to the Fortnightly Club of Eugene
  • 1999 May 25: "Long-Term Consequences of the Kosovo Conflict", for a special Oregon State University "town-gown" course titled "Kosovo: The Crisis in Perspective"

 

TEACHING

Current repertoire of courses:

  • WEBSITE COURSE PAGES. Beginning in 1990, I have been redesigning all lecture courses in order to introduce use of journals for library research. For this purpose, in 2000, I composed a website, A Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography [SAC], combining detailed chronology of main events, with growing linkages among the entries and linkages with global websites. SAC emphasizes primary source readings available on reserve or the open stacks of Knight Library, or (increasingly) on the internet.
  • HIST 245 Russia, America and the World (a freshman/sophomore-level, group-satisfying course in world history focusing on North America and Eurasia)
  • HIST 303 Modern Europe
  • HIST 345 Early Russian history
  • HIST 346 Imperial Russian history
  • HIST 399 Russia Now (Post-Soviet Political and Institutional Changes)
  • HIST 407/507 Seminar on various aspects of Russian political culture
  • HIST 445/545 History of Russian Political Culture
  • 1993-1998: Foreign Language Across the Curriculum [FLAC]. Co-designed and participated in grant-funded project o incorporate foreign language (Russian) in the university curriculum, beyond language departments and as supplement to their curriculum.