Orlando Figes (IPA pronunciation: [faɪdʒæs]) (born 1959) is a British historian of Russia, and a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.

Overview

Figes is the son of the feminist writer Eva Figes. His sister is the author and editor Kate Figes. He read History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with a rare double-starred First in 1982, and completed his PhD at Trinity College Cambridge, where he was a Fellow from 1984 to 1999. He was a Lecturer in History at Cambridge University from 1987 to 1999, before taking up the Chair of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.

He is known for his works on Russian history, in particular A People's Tragedy (1996), Natasha's Dance (2002) and The Whisperers (2007). Figes borrows from a broad range of methodologies, including social, cultural and oral history, and his writing combines literary and academic qualities.

A People's Tragedy, translated into twenty languages, is a study of the Russian Revolution and combines social and political history with biographical details in a historical narrative. It was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, the WH Smith Literary Award, the NCR Book Award, the Longman-History Today Book Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Natasha's Dance and The Whisperers were both short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, making Figes the only writer to have been short-listed twice for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The Whisperers was also short-listed for the Ondaatje Prize

Figes also writes for the international press, broadcasts on TV and the radio, and reviews books for the New York Review of Books. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Oral History and The Whisperers

Figes has made a significant contribution to the development of oral history in Russia. With the Memorial Society, he gathered several hundred private family archives from homes across Russia and interviewed thousands of survivors as well as perpetrators of the Stalinist repressions for his book The Whisperers. This represents one of the biggest collections of documents about private life in the Stalin era. Housed in the Memorial Society in Moscow, St Petersburg and Perm, many of these valuable research materials are available on line

Translated into over twenty languages, The Whisperers has been described by Andrei Kurkov as "one of the best literary monuments to the Soviet people, on a par with The Gulag Archipelago and the prose of Varlam Shalamov." In it Figes underlines the importance of oral testimonies for the recovery of the history of repression in the former Soviet Union. Whilst conceding that, 'like all memory, the testimony given in an interview is unreliable,' he has claimed that oral testimonies are, on the whole, 'more reliable than literary memoirs, which have usually been seen as a more authentic record of the past.' The reason he gives is that 'unlike a book, [oral testimony] can be cross-examined and tested against other evidence to disentangle true memories from received or imagined ones'.

Figes has included in The Whisperers a detailed study of the Soviet poet Konstantin Simonov, who became a leading figure in the Soviet Writers' Union and a propagandist in the 'anti-cosmopolitan' campaign during Stalin's final years. Drawing on the closed sections of Simonov's archive in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art and on the archives of the poet's wife and son, Figes has produced the most penetrating study yet of this major figure in the Soviet establishment.

Prizes

Winner

• 1997 – Wolfson History Prize A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
• 1997 – WH Smith Literary Award A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
• 1997 – NCR Book Award A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
• 1997 – Longman-History Today Book Prize A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
• 1997 – Los Angeles Times Book Prize A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924

Short-Listed

• 2003 – Samuel Johnson Prize Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia
• 2008 – Samuel Johnson Prize The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia
• 2008 – Ondaatje Prize The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

Works

• Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-21, 1989, ISBN 0-19-822169-X
• A People's Tragedy: Russian Revolution 1891-1924, 1996, ISBN 0-7126-7327-X
• With Boris Kolonitskii: Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917, 1999, ISBN 0-300-08106-5
• Natasha's Dance: A cultural History of Russia, 2002, ISBN 0-14-029796-0
• The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8050-7461-1, ISBN 0-8050-7461-9, ISBN 978-0-8050-7461-1, ISBN 0-8050-7461-9

Sources

• http://www.orlandofiges.com
• http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,,2290790,00.html

References

External links

• BBC Four presenter interview, May 2003
• Stalin's children, The Economist, October 2007
• Sunday Book Review, New York Times, November 2007
• NPR Interview, December 2007
• The Destruction of Memory, Washington Post, February 2008