Aaron Retish

Faculty Profile

Professor
ar6561@wayne.edu

Department

History

Phone

313-577-2525

Fax

313-577-6987

Office

3107 Faculty/Administration Building 

Biography

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. He can be reached at aretish@wayne.edu or aretish@gmail.com.

News mentions

Selected publications

  • "Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev: The Phantom of a Well Ordered State." Edited volume with Immo Rebitschek (University of Jena).  University of Toronto Press, forthcoming
  • "The Global Impact of the Russian Revolution." Edited volume with Matthew Rendle (University of Exeter). Routledge. October 2020
  • "Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914-1922," Cambridge University Press, August 2008.  Paperback edition in 2012.  Winner of the Wayne State Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Award, 2009. 
  • "Russia's Home Front In War And Revolution, 1914-22: Book 1. Russia's Revolution In Regional Perspective." Edited volume with Sarah Badcock (U. of Nottingham) and Liudmila Novikova (Higher School of Economics, Moscow). Slavica Press, 2015. 
  • Gender in Modern Russian History, 1860 to the Present. Book manuscript under contract, Bloomsbury Press
  • “The Birth of Soviet Criminology: Mikhail Gernet’s Vision of the Good State and the Dangers of the People in 1917,” Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, vol. 13 (2020): 184-213
  • “Peasant Dreams and Aspirations in the Russian Revolution,” in A Companion to the Russian Revolution, edited by Daniel Orlovsky. John Wiley & Sons, 2020, pp. 125-35
  • Комментария: “Жизнь в катасторофе: Повседневность и стратегии выживания,” in Гражданская война в России: Жизнь в эпоху социальных экспериментов и военных испытаний, 1917-1922. Nestor-Istoriia, 2020, pp. 171-74
  • “Judicial Reforms and Revolutionary Justice: The Establishment of the Court System in Soviet Russia, 1917-1922” in Russia's Home Front in War and Revolution, 1913-22, Book 3, 2018, pp. 369-99
  • “Silences and Noises: Commemorating 1917,” (with Matthew Rendle), Revolutionary Russia, vol. 29 (December 2017), 151-57
  • “Местная судебная система в Вятской губернии в 1917-1922 гг.” (The Local Court System in Viatka Province, 1917-1922), in Эпоха войн и революций, 1914-1922 (Era of Wars and Revolution, 1914-1922), edited by B. Kolonitsii and D. Orlovskii. (St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2017), pp. 100-12
  • “Breaking Free From the Imperial Prison:  Penal Reforms and Prison Life in Revolutionary Russia,” Historical Research (February, 2017): 134-50
  • “The Long Legacy of World War I: Remembering and Forgetting in Russia,” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, origins.osu.edu/article/long-legacy-world-war-i
  • “A Kaleidoscope of Revolutions,” (with Sarah Badcock and Liudmila Novikova) in Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective, 1914-1921, pp. 1-15
  •  “The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918: The Fateful Clash of Revolutionary Coalitions, Paramilitarism, and Bolshevik Power” in Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective, pp. 299-322
  • “The Taste of Kumyshka and the Debate over Udmurt Culture,” in Russian History through the Senses From 1700 to the Present, edited by Tricia Starks and Matthew P. Romaniello. Bloomsbury Press, 2016, pp. 141-64
  •  “Controlling Revolution: Victims of Social Violence and the Rural Soviet Courts 1917-1923,” Europe-Asia Studies 65 (November 2013): 1789-806
  • “Массовая политика и роль простых людей в Гражданской войне” (Popular Politics and the Role of Ordinary People in the Civil War,” Roundtable Discussion, Rossiiskaia istoriia 5 (Sept.-Oct. 2013): 19-24
  •  “Eastward Ho!  Russian Migratory Networks of Viatka Province during Peace and Revolution, 1850-1921,” in The Making of Russian History: Society, Culture, and the Politics of Modern Russia. Essays in Honor of Allan Wildman (Slavica Press, 2009), pp. 91-108
  • “Creating Peasant Citizens: Rituals of Power, Rituals of Citizenship in Viatka Province, February-October 1917,” Revolutionary Russia (June 2003): 47-67
  • “Becoming Enlightened: National Backwardness and Revolutionary Ideology,” Proceedings of the Ohio Academy of History 2002, (2003): 79-90
  • “Sotsial’nye konflikty v srede Viatskogo krest’ianstva v khode provedeniia zemel’noi reformy v 1918 g.” (Social Conflicts Among the Viatka Peasantry During the Implementation of the Land Reform in 1918), Nauchnyi vestnik. Kirovskogo filiala Moskovskogo gumanitarno ekonomicheskogo instituta. Nauchno-metodicheskii zhurnal, no. 5. Kirov, Russia, 2000, pp. 81-85

Research Description

I am currently working on a book project, “In the Courts of Revolution: Vengeance, Legality, and Citizenship in the Rural Soviet Courtroom, 1917-1939” that examines how rural Soviet citizens engaged local legal organs, such as the people’s courts, from the 1917 Communist revolution until the eve of World War II. My points of focus are court administration and popular legal culture in the Soviet Union. I am also interested in how people understood criminality and justice in a time of dynamic political and social violence.

Affiliated Departments

Tags