Wednesday, February 4, 20264:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Bunche Hall, Rm 6275
We are pleased to announce that the next UCLA European History Colloquium will be held on Wednesday, February 4, at 4pm PST, in Bunche 6275 and online via Zoom. Michael David-Fox, Professor of History at Georgetown University, will be joining us to speak on “Crucibles of Power: Smolensk Under Stalinist and Nazi Rule.”
About the Talk
Michael David-Fox will discuss Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule (Harvard University Press, 2025) as a work that crossfertilizes three fields—the study of Stalinism, Nazi German occupation on the Eastern Front during World War II, and the Holocaust. Aiming at the place where local and regional history meets the grand narrative, the book examines the workings of power and the dilemma of choice at an epicenter of the twentieth century's age of extremes. In this talk, David-Fox will focus on three of the book’s major figures and the choices they made in terms of what the book calls “biographical logics.” In particular, the book highlights a significant group that has not been given as much attention as it deserves: ordinary people, far from the halls of power, who in an hour of crisis reached out to grab a slice of power for themselves. Crucibles of Power explains how the depths of the twentieth century speak to our own troubled times with new questions and a new urgency.
About The Speaker
Michael David-Fox is a historian of the Russian empire and the USSR. His work has ranged across political and cultural history, communism and fascism, the history of the Russian Revolution and comparative revolutionary studies, transnational studies and modernity theory, and the history of Bolshevism and Stalinism. His most recent research explores the history of the Eastern Front in WWII, Nazi-Stalinist entanglements, political violence, the German occupation of Russian territories in WWII, and the historical roots and history politics of Putinism.
Venue
Bunche Hall Room 6725 (6th Floor of Bunche)
Online via Zoom (Register for Zoom link)