Contact
➤ LOCATION
School of Historical and Philosophical Studies
Room 516, Arts West (West Wing) The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010
☎ CONTACT
medele@unimelb.edu.au
+61 3 8344 0523
Key Research Areas
Soviet Union in the Second World War, historiography, Stalinism, war and post-war Soviet society, war and displacement, History of veterans (Soviet and comparative).
Historian of the Soviet Union
Mark Edele is the inaugural Hansen Professor in History at the University of Melbourne where he also serves as Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Arts. He is a historian of the Soviet Union and its successor states, in particular Russia. A former Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow he has served as Deputy Head of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (SHAPS) at the University of Melbourne and as Deputy Associate Dean (academic performance) in the Faculty of Arts. He was trained as a historian at the Universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, Moscow and Chicago. His publications include Soviet Veterans of the Second World War (2008), Stalinist Society (2011), Stalin’s Defectors (2017), Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union (edited with Atina Grossmann and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2017), The Soviet Union. A Short History (2019), Debates on Stalinism (2020); The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century. A Comparative History, with Martin Crotty and Neil Diamant (2020); Stalinism at War. The Soviet Union in World War II (2021). His latest book, Russia’s War against Ukraine. The Whole Story was published in August 2023. He is a Chief Investigator on ARC Discovery Grant DP200101728, "KGB Empire: State Security Archives in the former Eastern Bloc," (December 2020-December 2023); and ARC DP200101777, "Aftermaths of War: Violence, Trauma, Displacement, 1815-1950," (June 2020 – June 2024). He teaches the histories of the Soviet Union, of the Second World War, and of dictatorship and democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
A history of Russian and Soviet studies at the University of Melbourne is available here and information on the University of Melbourne Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space (RIPSS) is here.
Latest news
My book explaining the historical background of Russia’s War Against Ukraine was published by Melbourne University Press in August 2023 in both paperback and e-book formats. It is also available on JStor and on Amazon as a kindle book and paperback. A free edited excerpt is available from Inside Story. Marko Pavlyshyn reviewed it in The Conversation: “a reliable account of this war and the issues surrounding it… a brief but authoritative guide to the historical evolution of Ukraine, Russia, and relations between them…. written in a lively and engaging style.” Norrie Sanders, writing for The Queensland Reviewers Collective, noted that the book “effortlessly makes sense of the long and complex histories of the two countries [Ukraine and Russia] and their relationships. Some of the historical material is intricate, nuanced and difficult to analyse. Professor Edele writes with clarity and brevity, even if the events described were not. Nor does he shirk the responsibility of an outsider writing for outsiders to examine the evidence and present it objectively… Mark Edele’s densely packed information meticulously weaves the many threads of history into the events that inhabit our news feeds every day. It should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to make sense of the forces at play. It is an important book whose relevance is unlikely to be diminished by the passage of events.” Sheila Fitzpatrick, writing a group review of recent publications on this war for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, declared that Russia’s War Against Ukraine “is the book to read if you want to be both entertained and intellectually stimulated.” Tim Gwynn Jones interviewed me on the book on New Books Network, Julian Morrow on Radio National Sunday Extra
I continue to review books on Russia’s war, both good ones and those I found problematic. A first attempt at a historiography was published in Inside Story in November 2023. A piece on the Prigozhin affair a month after the mutiny was published in The Conversation in 2023 and republished by the ABC and a short stocktake of the war (and of punditry on it) appeared in Inside Story in August 2023.
Other writing on the war against Ukraine includes “Inside Vladimir Putin’s paranoia” in The Saturday Paper No. 389 (5-11 March 2022). A follow up, entitled “How the War in Ukraine will end,” was published in No. 392 (26 March - 1 April 2022). The latter was also accompanied by a podcast. For the recording of a seminar on the historical background of this war, held on 29 April 2022 with three leading scholars, see the engagement section of this website. A review of two major 2022 books trying to make sense of the war is here. My own reflections on the wider historical context were published in Inside Story (19 September 2022) as well as in the form of the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture 2022. Patricia Karvelas interviewed me, together with UCL’s Mark Galeotti, on RN Breakfast on 6 December 2022. Much of this work culminated in my book on the origins of this war, published in August 2023.
Stalinism at War (Bloomsbury, 2021). Interview with Uketube (11 February 2021). Reviews in Moscow Times 29 November 2021 ("a refreshing break with tradition… Edele writes with a lively elegance that makes his narrative a genuine pleasure to read."); Asia Times 31 December 2021 ("delivers plentiful for his reader's buck – or rather, ruble. …recommended reading"); Michigan War Studies Review (March 2022 ("a fine, detailed general history of the USSR in 1937-49 … better fits the domestic history of the USSR than do previous works on the subject."); The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 34, No. 4 ("A true tour de force… a very nuanced picture of the Soviet war effort … situating the Soviet grand strategy in the wider geopolitics of the time period … a true model for future scholarship."); The Russian Review 81, No. 4 (2022) ("a superb account of the Soviet Second World War, one the present reviewer will be assigning to classes for a long time to come." "a standout title"). An interview on the book was published in New Book Network, 1 March 2022. In 2022, Deperta Ferro published the Spanish edition. A long review, with interview, was published by El Mundo in September. The book was part of a review essay by Robert Dale in Kritika in 2024 (“impresses in its ability to integrate individual wartime experiences within the wider sweep of history;” provides “a far more nuanced, complicated, and less Russocentric account of the European War … another of the strengths of this work is its appreciation of the multinational nature of the Soviet state and war effort. … the strength of this account lies in its ability to synthesise military events, political reforms, economic processes, and the experiences of individuals or particular social groups.”)
Debates on Stalinism: Iva Glisic interviewed me on the book on New Book Network and Jonathon Dallimore of the History Teachers Association of NSW for their podcast series. A sample chapter is available here.The longest and most thorough review the book received was written by Pavel Gavrilov and published (in Russian) in Неприкосновенный запас 2021. Other reviews include: Lewis Siegelbaum in Labour History 202,Roger Markwick in History Australia 2020, and Ivan Kurilla (“excellent medicine”) in JSPPS 2021.
My review of Sean McMeekin’s tendentious Stalin’s War on Inside Story 25 May 2021. The review was picked up, in a shortened form, by H-Diplo as part of a roundtable in 2022. McMeekin’s reply prompted an intervention of Michael Carley, who set the record straight.
Stalin in the Summer of 1941: A Drama in Three Acts. Short online lecture to commemorate the start of the German-Soviet war, 80 years ago, on 22 June 1941. The lecture is an edited excerpt from a longer articlepublished by the Russian journal Neprikosnovennyi zapas as part of a special issue commemorating the start of the German-Soviet war of 1941–45 (a discussion of the issue is here). The lecture zooms in on the earliest days of the war. It observes up close Stalin’s behaviour between the German invasion on 22 June and a crisis of confidence the dictator suffered on 29 June.
Who won the Second World War and why should you care? Reassessing Stalin’s War 75 years after victory. Journal of Strategic Studies (2020). Free eprints available here (if the limit is reached, contact medele@unimelb.edu.au for a copy)
Dan Stone reviews Shelter from the Holocaust in Patterns of Prejudice. Excerpt: “For those who think that there is nothing new to be said in Holocaust Studies, this book will come as a revelation. Although research into the Polish Jews who spent the war years in the Soviet Union has been steadily growing in recent years, it remains a remarkably under-researched topic. As a result, this volume, with its carefully researched chapters and wide scope, is hugely welcome. Although conceived as a place-holder, promising much more research to come, it represents the state of the art and offers not only an accessible introduction to a much-neglected topic, but also explanations as to why it has been neglected and why that situation is rapidly changing.”
Stalin’s Defectors reviewed by Peter Whitewood of York St John University in British Journal of Military History 5.1 (2019). Excerpt: “… the book presents convincing challenges to recent research on popular support for Stalinism. … Edele’s book will remain the definitive account of defection in the Red Army and it moves contested debates about the nature of Soviet society further forward. … Challenging a recent school of thought emphasising ideology and ‘Stalinist subjectivity’ as underpinning Stalinism…, Edele instead convincingly argues for a mass sense of defeatism in Soviet society from the very start of the war.”
Stalin’s Defectors reviewed by Helmut Langerbein in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 33.1 (2019): “Stalin’s Defectors is a great introduction to the complex issues of defection and collaboration, and a successful synthesis of different subfields and specializations in history. “ “Edele’s greatest strength is his careful and nuanced evaluation of the sources and the circumstances under which they were collected, and he refrains from unwarranted judgments.”
Two new reviews of Stalin’s Defectors. In Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 66, No. 3 (2018), German scholar Andreas Hilger complains bitterly about the price, but once he started reading, he found the book “worthwhile:”“Edele’s study will contribute to safeguarding the historical analysis of this topic against one-sided political-historical instrumentalization." Karel Berkhoff, author of pathbreaking books on the occupation of Ukraine and of Soviet wartime propaganda, writes in Slavic Review 77, No. 4 (2018): “the author establishes clearly, on the basis of enormous research, that Soviet desertion was special. … The book is engagingly written. … Edele uses all the right sources, poses smart questions about a difficult and understudied topic, and clearly presents answers that significantly advance our understanding. For all these reasons, this excellent book must be highly recommended.”
Jonathan House of the US Army Command and General Staff College reviews Stalin’s Defectors in Russian Review 77.1 (2018): 160-61. Excerpt: “This brief review cannot do justice to the sophisticated quantitative and qualitative analysis Edele has produced. This is a highly readable, thought-provoking book that addresses key issues of both wartime defection and loyalty to the Stalinist regime."
Stalin’s Defectors reviewed by Robert Dale in Slavonic and East European Review 2018/4. Excerpt: “Stalin’s Defectors works across a rich palette of sources and approaches, combining military, intellectual, statistical, social and cultural approaches to the past with fascinating results. Edele writes fluently and precisely, and is careful to not stretch his evidence too far. The book makes an important contribution to ongoing debates about the war on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945, and deserves to read widely, by anybody interested in either side of this conflict.”