Dr Jonathan D Smele
Senior Lecturer in History
Location: Arts Two 3.11email: j.d.smele@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7882 8372
Dr Jonathan Smele was educated at the University of Leeds, gaining a BA in International History and Politics in 1980, before moving on to postgraduate study at the University of Glasgow (MPhil in Soviet and East European Studies, 1984). He was awarded his PhD from the University of Wales in 1991, for a thesis on the anti-Bolshevik movement in Russian Civil War. Before taking up a lecturing post at Queen Mary in 1992, he had previously taught at the University of Edinburgh (1988–91) and the University of Aberdeen (1991–92). In 1998 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is a long-standing member of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution and since 2002 has been editor of its journal, Revolutionary Russia. He is the author of numerous articles and books.
Research interests:
Dr Smele’s research interests focus on the political and international history of late Imperial Russia, the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the Russian Civil War, Russian foreign policy and the history of Siberia. He has also worked on Anglo-Russian and Anglo-Soviet relations in the revolutionary period.
Dr Smele’s monograph, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) was notably well received by its reviewers: ‘Read, mark and learn from this acutely discerning work’ (John Erickson, The Times Higher); ‘Smele paints a canvas of great breadth and fascinating perspective...This book is all but certain to become a classic in its field’ (W Bruce Lincoln, The American Historical Review); ‘A significant contribution to the historiography not only of Russia, but also of the anatomy of revolution and counter-revolution’ (David Collins, The English Historical Review); ‘This book contributes greatly to our understanding of the Russian Civil War and the outcome of the Russian Revolution’ (Vladimir Brovkin, The Historian).
Dr Smele also compiled The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921: An Annotated Bibliography (London/New York: Continuum, 2003). This too was highly praised by its reviewers: ‘An extraordinary work…of unparalleled erudition’ (Geoffrey Swain, Slavonic and East European Review); ‘Smele’s bibliography is an outstanding resource that should be on the shelves of every university library’ (Michael Hickey, Revolutionary Russia).
‘This is a most generous undertaking… Smele has built a bibliography on the Russian revolution and civil war, which is vast, perceptively annotated and organized with great intelligence…[His] introduction and style are lucid and witty, his care and precision exemplary…The volume is a handsome thing to have and a must for any decent library’ (Edward Acton, European History Quarterly). He has also edited (with Anthony Heywood) a collection of essays on the 1905 Revolution, The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary Perspectives (London/New York: Routledge, 2005), was the editor (with David Collins) of Kolchak i Sibir′: dokumenty i issledovaniia, 2 vols (White Plains, NY: Kraus International, 1988), and has contributed an article on ‘War, Revolution and Civil War in Russia: The Eastern Front, 1914–1921’ to the BBC History website.
Dr Smele is currently writing an Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil War, which will be published by The Scarecrow Press in 2010, and a monograph on the Russian Civil War for OneWorld Publishers that will appear in 2011.
A collection of Dr Smele's lectures on the Russian Revolution was published on cd under the title From Tsarism to Bolshevism by The Modern Scholar/Recorded Books in 2009.
Postgraduate supervision:
PhD theses supervised by Dr Smele include ‘The Union for the Regeneration: the Anti-Bolshevik Underground in Revolutionary Russia’ and ‘Vladimir Burtsev and the Russian Revolutionary Emigration: Surveillance of Foreign Political Refugees in London, 1891–1905’. He is willing to supervise theses on most aspects of the history of the late-imperial and revolutionary periods in Russia and on Anglo-Russian or Anglo-Soviet relations in those periods.
Publications:
Books
Smele, JD and Heywood, AJ (eds),The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary Perspectives. London/New York: Routledge, 2005.
Smele, JD (comp, ed & annot), The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921: An Annotated Bibliography. London/New York: Continuum, 2003.
Smele, JD, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918–1920. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Collins, D and Smele, JD (eds), Kolchak i Sibir¢: dokumenty i issledovaniia, 1919–1926. White Plains, NY: Kraus International, 1988.
Articles and chapters
Smele, JD, ‘“Mania grandiosa” and “The Turning Point in World History”: Kerensky in London in 1918’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol 20 (2007), No 1, pp 1–34.
Smele, JD, ‘A Bolshevik in Brixton Prison: Fedor Raskol'nikov and the Origins of Anglo-Soviet Relations’, in Ian D Thatcher (ed), Reinterpreting Revolutionary Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp 110–35.
Smele, JD, ‘The Study Group on the Russian Revolution: The First Thirty Years’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol 18 (2005), No 2, pp 201–38.
Smele, JD ‘The Russian Civil War’, in The Reader’s Guide to Military History. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001, pp 510–15.
Smele, JD ‘What the Papers Didn’t Say: Unpublished Despatches from Russia by M Philips Price, May 1918–January 1919’, Revolutionary Russia Vol 8 (1995), No 2, pp 129–165.
Smele, JD ‘White Gold: The Imperial Russian Gold Reserve in the Anti-Bolshevik East, 1918–? (An Un-concluded Chapter in the History of the Russian Civil War)’, Europe–Asia Studies Vol 46 (1994), No 8, pp 1317–47.
Smele. JD ‘“What Kolchak Wants!” Military Versus Polity in White Siberia, 1918–1920’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol 4 (1991), No 1, pp 52–110.
Links to external sites
Study Group on the Russian Revolution
BBC Site: War and Revolution in Russia, 1914–1921
Undergraduate teaching:
Europe since 1890
From the Tsars to the Bolsheviks: Russia, 1801-1921
The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 (Special Subject)
Postgraduate teaching:
‘Constitutional Russia, 1905–1917’ (MA Option)