Doctoral Dissertation by Lawrence Davis
Papers by Lawrence Davis
Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate, 2021
spent nineteen years of his life in the Soviet Gulag after being swept up in Stalin's show trials... more spent nineteen years of his life in the Soviet Gulag after being swept up in Stalin's show trials of the late 1930s. He reappeared in Warsaw in 1961 and began to assemble The Gulag Handbook, to "bear witness...to the experiences of his follow Gulag prisoners" and to document the slang of the Gulag, through which the reader would understand its historical, linguistic, and cultural universe (290). The Gulag Handbook was eventually published in several languages, which gave Rossi a measure of notoriety as a voice of anti-communism in the French media in the 1980s and 1990s. At times both fascinating and exasperating, Jacques the Frenchman on balance succeeds in introducing the reader to a dark and forbidding period in Soviet history through Rossi's retelling of his personal experiences. Michèle Sarde is professor emerita at Georgetown University in French literature and gender studies and contributes the context for Rossi's testimony. The book provides an engaging look at the Gulag through the bureaucracy of the Soviet carceral state and the impact that citizenship rights (or lack thereof) had on the treatment of Rossi and his fellow inmates. Rossi makes the claim that the interrogators in Soviet prisons were not driven by cruelty but were "zealous bureaucrats" who worked within a system where they would appeal to their superiors for permission to use specific "methods to gain a confession" (116). However, it was the small indignities that bedevilled inmates incessantly. For example, mail distribution had a bureaucratic and, by extension, coercive function. The mail was censored, of course, to make sure that inmates did not receive bad news that would detract from their work production. The process of receiving mail meant that each prisoner was moved to an individual cell and was therefore subjected to a meeting with a security officer. Rossi could not send a letter abroad because he was labeled a Soviet citizen despite his obvious Polish and French origins. Even worse, being stripped of his Polish citizenship meant additional years of suffering in the Gulag. It is within this context that Rossi conveys his hopeless situation through humour, which is one of the strengths of his recollections. When he finally returned to France, after decades away, he routinely went through passport control without incident: "I couldn't believe it. The last time I crossed a border, the Soviet customs officers had practically done a careful examination of my anus" (299). The human toll of Stalin's Terror receives a lot of attention, and Rossi brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Georges Lefebvre was one of the most influential French historians of the twentieth century, a pi... more Georges Lefebvre was one of the most influential French historians of the twentieth century, a pioneer in the study of the French Revolution. His professional career, however, provoked controversy, and since his death in 1959 historians have grappled with the meaning of his scholarship and his role as a public intellectual. Lefebvre was a proponent of the social, or "orthodox," interpretation of the French Revolution, a historiographical tradition founded by socialist politician and scholar of the Revolution Jean Jaurès. This interpretation held that the Revolution brought the bourgeoisie to power at the expense of the Church and nobility, the representatives of an outdated feudal order. The bourgeoisie then enshrined the principle of private property and equality in law, a factor that contributed to the rise of a capitalist order in France and ultimately the world. The bulk of Lefebvre's scholarship reflects the framework of the social interpretation. However, his work diverges from this interpretation in one significant way: he was a specialist in the study of the French peasantry. He sought to understand how the Revolution impacted the lives of rural folk and, in turn, how this social group influenced the course of revolutionary events.
History in Dispute. Volume 17: Twentieth-Century European Social and Political Movements, Second Series (2004), 87-94.
Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850 Selected Papers, 190-198., 1995
Book Reviews by Lawrence Davis
Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire, Dec 2011
Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire, Sep 2007
Labour/Le Travail, Sep 2004
Labour/Le Travail, Apr 2002
J. Β.A/c^cW^: A Biography Thomas Carlyle. McLachlan was only (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1999)
Teaching Documents by Lawrence Davis
This PowerPoint presentation (set to music) was featured during a North Shore Community College/D... more This PowerPoint presentation (set to music) was featured during a North Shore Community College/Davis Center (Harvard University) event held on Thursday, April 14, 2022 via Zoom. The presentation ran as people were logging on.
Here is an overview of the program:
The Soviet Union was the site of ferocious fighting during World War II. The brutal German occupation forced women to make extraordinary choices that seem unimaginable to us today. What were the conditions that informed their choices and how do historians interpret their experiences?
Please join us for an evening of conversation with two scholars who specialize in this research. The event is co-sponsored by North Shore Community College and Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
I wrote this piece for my blog “Window on the World”: http://windowonworld-ldavis.blogspot.com/20... more I wrote this piece for my blog “Window on the World”: http://windowonworld-ldavis.blogspot.com/2016/07/robespierre-and-memory-in-france.html
My writing is inspired by a debate in the pages of Le Figaro in June 2016 regarding a call for a street in Paris to be named in Maximilien Robespierre's honor. I argue that the debate has the potential to open up an avenue through which Robespierre's legacy can be reexamined.
It’s my goal to develop it in to a conference paper and then an article. Any and all feedback is welcome. Any advice regarding source material on Robespierre and the Terror would be greatly appreciated.
PowerPoint. Please see lecture notes.
Notes to accompany PowerPoint.
Uploads
Doctoral Dissertation by Lawrence Davis
Papers by Lawrence Davis
Book Reviews by Lawrence Davis
Teaching Documents by Lawrence Davis
Here is an overview of the program:
The Soviet Union was the site of ferocious fighting during World War II. The brutal German occupation forced women to make extraordinary choices that seem unimaginable to us today. What were the conditions that informed their choices and how do historians interpret their experiences?
Please join us for an evening of conversation with two scholars who specialize in this research. The event is co-sponsored by North Shore Community College and Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
My writing is inspired by a debate in the pages of Le Figaro in June 2016 regarding a call for a street in Paris to be named in Maximilien Robespierre's honor. I argue that the debate has the potential to open up an avenue through which Robespierre's legacy can be reexamined.
It’s my goal to develop it in to a conference paper and then an article. Any and all feedback is welcome. Any advice regarding source material on Robespierre and the Terror would be greatly appreciated.
Here is an overview of the program:
The Soviet Union was the site of ferocious fighting during World War II. The brutal German occupation forced women to make extraordinary choices that seem unimaginable to us today. What were the conditions that informed their choices and how do historians interpret their experiences?
Please join us for an evening of conversation with two scholars who specialize in this research. The event is co-sponsored by North Shore Community College and Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
My writing is inspired by a debate in the pages of Le Figaro in June 2016 regarding a call for a street in Paris to be named in Maximilien Robespierre's honor. I argue that the debate has the potential to open up an avenue through which Robespierre's legacy can be reexamined.
It’s my goal to develop it in to a conference paper and then an article. Any and all feedback is welcome. Any advice regarding source material on Robespierre and the Terror would be greatly appreciated.