Michael Hickey

Michael C. Hickey, Ph.D., professor of history, presented the research paper "Making Jews Soviet in Smolensk? Jewish Politprosvet during NEP" on the panel "The Rise and Fall of Soviet Jewish Culture" at the annual conference of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies in Boston on Dec. 7. Hickey's paper focused on Jewish reading rooms established by the communist regime in the 1920s as "political education" institutions and the ways Jews in small towns in western Russia actually used such institutions. Hickey also spoke on "New Research on the Nature of Power and the Theme of Violence in the Russian Revolution" as a member of the 8 December ASEEES roundtable on "Russia in 1917: Legacies of the Centennial, Unanswered Questions, New Agendas."

Scholarship 2018

August — Hickey, Ph.D., has a research essay "Who Controls The Woods? Forests and Monogovlastie in Smolensk in 1917" that will appear in the peer reviewed journal Revolutionary Russia in June 2019. Revolutionary Russia is the foremost journal on the revolutionary period of Russia. It publishes interdisciplinary research and reviews.

May — Hickey, Ph.D., participated in the Notre Dame Workshop on the History of the 1917 Revolution held at the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at Tel Aviv University (Israel) on May 27 to 28. The workshop brought together 10 scholars from England, France, Israel, Russia, and the United States for intensive discussion of participants' new research on the Russian Revolution. Also, Hickey chaired a panel in April on "Holocaust Trials in Germany and Hungary" at the 35th Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide at Millersville University.

January — Hickey, Ph.D., presented the papers "Jewish Institutions and Stalinist Terror in Smolensk" and "Evidence, Narratives, and Legitimacy: Considering Recent Work on 1917 by Semion Lyandres, Vera Kaplan, and Dina Moyal" at the annual conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Chicago this past fall.

January — Hickey, Ph.D., served as chair and lead discussant for two panels at the annual meeting of the Study Group for the Russian Revolution in Cardiff, Wales: "Soviet Democracy: Institutional and Cultural Perspectives," and "War Communism and NEP: Economics, Politics, and Society."

Scholarship 2017

November — Hickey, Ph.D., gave a public lecture on "The Fractiousness of Jewish Politics in the Russian Revolution" at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University of Ohio.

May — Hickey, Ph.D., presented the research paper "Dogs in the Manger? Rural Smolensk in 1917" at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies in Alexandria, Va., this spring. Hickey's paper examined the intersection of village-level conflicts over control of forest resources and political debates over the locations of decision-making power and the structure of the revolutionary state in rural Russia in 1917, based upon local archival and newspaper sources.

March — Hickey, Ph.D., article "Memory, Paper, and a Good Story: How Smolensk Got its 'October'" has been selected for an on-line anthology published by the journal Revolutionary Russia to commemorate the centennial of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The anthology brings together 14 of the most significant essays on 1917 published in the journal since its inception in 1988. Hickey's essay, originally published in 2008, employs provincial archival sources to examine the politics of public memory of the revolution.

February — Hickey, Ph.D., presented "Social Structures, Fields of Power, and Individual Experience: Interlocking Themes in Discussion of the 1917 Revolutions on the Occasional of its Centennial,” at the annual international conference of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution at Newcastle, England. This year's conference commemorated the centennial of Russia's 1917 revolutions, and brought together fifty scholars from across Europe and North America. Hickey's talk, in the meeting's final session "Future Directions," presented a summary, synthesis and critique of the twenty-four papers presented at this conference.

Scholarship 2016

December — Hickey, Ph.D., spoke on two panels at this fall's Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies conference in Washington D.C.

Hickey served as discussant on the panel "Alternatives to Soviet Power: Autumn 1917," which examined the viability of democratic coalitions as an option to the communist party's seizure of power. He also was a presenter on the panel "Prelude to Centennial: What and How We are Thinking About 1917," which focused on new research directions in the study of the Russian Revolution.

In summer 2016, Hickey was appointed to the editorial board of Revolutionary Russia, the peer reviewed journal of the British-based Study Group on the Russian Revolution.

August — Hickey, Ph.D., took part in a research workshop on "Russia's Failed Democratic Revolution, 1917," hosted by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies of Notre Dame University, and held at the Palmer House in Chicago. The workshop brought together eight leading scholars from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in the history of the Russian Revolution, with the aim of producing a book to coincide with the revolution's centennial in 2017. Hickey's research presentation, "Lost in the Vermicelli? The Provisional Government and State Administration in Smolensk Province," focused on the local governance in the Russian provinces from March 1917 through March 1918.

April — Hickey, Ph.D., discussed this new research as the featured speaker at the Delaware Valley Seminar on Russian History at Swarthmore College. In addition, Hickey's featured review essay "Russian Culture in War and Revolution" will appear in the journal Revolutionary Russia in summer 2016.

In the field of Holocaust Aftermath studies, Hickey's featured review essay "Jewish Life in Belarus: The Final Decade of the Stalin Regime" appeared this spring in The Belorussian Political Science Review, vol. 3. And on April 7, Hickey served as commentator for the panel "Polish Jewish Refugees and Displaced Persons" at the 34th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide at Millersville University, where he also chaired and commented on the panel "The Aftermath of the Holocaust and Its Commemoration in Western Europe."

March — Hickey, Ph.D., participated in an international conference on "Russia's Failed Democratic Revolution, 1917: A Centennial Reappraisal," held in Rome (Italy) and hosted by the Notre Dame University's Nanovic Institute for European Studies. In addition to chairing the conference's opening session, Hickey presented his new research on the mechanics of local state administration in Russia in 1917. Hickey's essay from that conference, "Lost in the Vermicelli? The Provincial Government and Local Administration in Smolensk in 1917" will appear later this year in a special issue of the Journal of Modern Russian Historiography and History.

Scholarship 2015

November — Hickey, Ph.D., presented two discussant's commentary papers at the 2015 meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies in Philadelphia: “Jews as Political Pawns in Wartime and Post-War: Aspects of Polish and Soviet State Antisemitism, 1941-1953,” and "What Kind of State and Revolution? On the Fundamental Political Conflicts of the 1917 Russian Revolution." The ASEEES meeting is the premier annual international conference in the field of Russia and East European Studies.

November — Hickey, Ph.D., presented the paper "The Jews in the Revolution" on the panel "Reassessing 1917: Towards the Centennial" at the annual national conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in San Antonio, Tx. Hickey's essay by the same title will appear in Daniel Orlovsky, ed., The Blackwell Companion to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, UK: Blackwell, 2015).

Scholarship 2014

April — Hickey, Ph.D., has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship to spend several weeks this summer in Smolensk, Russia, where he will continue his archival research on local Jewish history, lecture at Smolensk State University on trends in American historiography about Russia, and develop cooperative digital archive projects with Smolensk State University history faculty.

March — Hickey, Ph.D., was an invited participant this spring on a panel that discussed "The Ukrainian Crisis" at Bucknell University's Institute for Public Policy. Hickey's presentation focused on the role of historical memory in shaping the current crisis in Ukraine. Hickey presented some of his new research on Russian-Jewish community politics during World War One, at the Delaware Valley Seminar on Russian History at Swarthmore University.

January — Hickey, Ph.D., has been appointed to the editorial board of the Russian-language interdisciplinary academic periodical Izvestiia Smolenskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, which publishes research by faculty and graduate students at Russia's Smolensk State University.

Scholarship 2013

November — Hickey, Ph.D., presented two research papers at the November 2013 conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Boston: “The Smolensk Peasantry in 1917” for the panel “Revolutions and Revolutionaries: Building a Peasant Constituency”; and “The Provincial Government in Smolensk,” for the panel “New Research on the Russian Revolution, Part 1: The Provisional Government.”

February — Hickey, Ph.D., completed the essay “Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War,” which will appear in the book A Kaleidoscope of Revolutions: Russia in Regional Perspective, 1914-1921, edited by Aaron Retish, Sarah Badcock, and Liudmila Novikova (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2014). The chapter summarizes findings from Hickey’s fifteen years of archival fieldwork on local Jewish history in the Russian provincial city of Smolensk.

January — Hickey, Ph.D., edited the latest volume of the refereed academic publication On the Jewish Street/Na Evreiskoi Ulitse: A Journal of Russian-Jewish History and Culture, which provides a forum for new research and documentary materials on the history of Jews in the Russian Empire and the former Soviet Union.

Scholarship 2012

November — Hickey, Ph.D., presented a discussant’s paper, “The Construction of Jewishness and Jewish-Gentile Networks: Three Cases, Places, Periods, and Outcomes,” on Nov. 18 for the panel “Jewish Experiences in Modern Poland and Moldova” at the annual Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies conference in New Orleans. He also chaired the panel "Ukraine between the Wars" on Nov. 15.

The ASEEES conference is the world’s largest and most important annual gathering of scholars who specialize in the study of Russia, Eastern European, and Eurasia. In 2012, Hickey served as co-chair of the conference program committee. In that capacity, he oversaw the vetting process for and did the scheduling of the 500-plus panels and meetings held at this year’s conference. Hickey also fulfilled a number of administrative duties during the four-days of meetings, including serving as MC at the annual association awards ceremony.

October — Hickey, Ph.D., won the Outstanding Reference Source Award for 2012 from the American Library Association (Reference and User Services Association) for his book, "Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Words" (Greenwood, 2011). The book was also selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.

August — Hickey, Ph.D., recently published the essay, "The Historical Malleability of Marriage and its Endurance as an Institution," Daily Life Through History (ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web).

April —l Hickey, Ph.D., presented two papers at the annual Southern Slavic Association Conference in Alexandria, Va., on April 8 and April 9. Hickey presented the paper, “Jewish Left Socialists and the Stalinist Terror in Smolensk: The Case of Boris Podvitskii and the Smolensk Terrorist Group, 1937-1938.,” and then presented the paper, “Against the Grain: Michael Melancon and the Persistent Rethinking of Russian Revolutionary History.”

January — Hickey, Ph.D., recently had his work, "Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Words" (Santa Barbara CA: Greenwood/ABC-Clio, 2011) published. Hickey is also the editor of the new academic journal On the Jewish Street/Na Evreiskoi Ulitse A Journal of Russian-Jewish History and Culture, vol. 1, no. 1, which was published in January 2011.

Scholarship 2008

June — Hickey, Ph.D., has been awarded a Research Associate Fellowship at the Summer Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois Center for Russian and East European Studies for June 2008.

September — Hickey, Ph.D., has written an article, "Communists vs. Clerics: The Smolensk Choral Synagogue, the Khislavichi Rov Shtibl Synagogue, and the Anti-Religious Campaign in Smolensk during NEP" that will appear in the September-October 2008 issue of the journal NEP Era: Soviet Russia, 1921-1928.

November — Hickey, Ph.D., served as program committee chair and primary organizer of the 2008 conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Philadelphia in November. This year's program included almost 500 panels and over 1200 presenters, making it one of the largest conferences in the history of the AAASS.

In his capacity as program chair, Hickey presented reports at the association's Executive Board meeting on 20 November and served as Master of Ceremonies at the association's annual awards ceremony on Nov. 22. Hickey also was appointed chair of the association's advisory committee on communications and conducted that committee's annual meeting on Nov. 22.

In addition, Hickey served as Chair for two conference panels: "Gender and the Cold War: A German Studies Association-AAASS Cooperative Panel" on 21 November; and "The Bolsheviks in Power: On Alexander Rabinowitch's Study of Petrograd under Bolshevik Rule in 1918" on 22 November.