Access is granted in accordance with the
Protocols for the University Archives and Records Center.
PROVENANCE
The collection was transferred to the University Archives with the
records of the History Department in 1995.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Moshe Lewin was born in Wilno, Poland in 1921. He graduated with his
B. A. from the Tel Aviv University, Israel, in 1961 and earned his Ph.D.
from Sorbonne, Paris, in 1964. He was Director of Study Ecole des Hautes
Etudes, Paris, from 1965 to 1966 and senior fellow of Columbia University
from 1967 to 1968. Appointed research professor of the Birmingham University,
England, in 1968, he held that position until 1978 when he came to the
United States and was appointed professor of history at the University
of Pennsylvania. One of the most influential scholars of Russian and
Soviet history in the world, Lewin authored many books, among them Russian
Peasant and Soviet Power (1968), Lenin's Last Struggle (1968), Political
Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates (1974), The Making of the Soviet
System (1985), The Gorbachev Phenomenon (1988), Stalinism and the Seeds
of Soviet Reform: the Debates of the 1960's (1991), Russia--USSR--Russia
: the Drive and Drift of a Superstate (1995), and Stalinism and Nazism
: Dictatorships in Comparison (co-edited with Ian Kershaw, 1997). He
retired and was elected Professor Emeritus at Penn in 1995.
SCOPE AND CONTENT
The bulk of Lewin's papers consists of correspondence covering the
period from 1977 to 1995. Another major group is of files on his involvement
in the convening of various conferences on Russian Studies, particularly
the Conference for a comparative study of Germany and Russian in the
20th century held in Philadelphia in 1992.
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