Aaron Retish

 Aaron Retish is a specialist in late Imperial and Soviet history with a focus on the social, cultural, and political history of the countryside. He is the author of Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914-1922, a regional study of how peasants’ conceptions of themselves as citizens evolved in a time of total war, mass revolutionary politics, and civil breakdown. He is also the author of articles on violence in the Revolutionary era, local courts, and penal reform and has broader research interests in law and punishment, gender, and ethnicity in the Soviet era.  Retish co-edits Revolutionary Russia, the leading journal in its field. He also serves on the Board of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives and is associate editor of its journal The Volunteer. Retish teaches courses in Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history and politics, as well as world and modern European history.