Professional Affiliation

Historian of Modern Russia; Researcher, Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

Expert Bio

Anatoly Pinsky is an historian of modern Russia (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2011) and grant-funded researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki. His work focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of the Stalin- and post-Stalin-era Soviet Union, and has appeared in Slavic Review, Russian Review, Kritika, and other publications. 

Pinsky is currently working on two book manuscripts. The first explores the history of Stalin- and early post-Stalin-era lyric poetry, and shows how Soviet lyric poets laid a foundation for the cultural “Thaw” of the mid-1950s–1960s. The second traces the history of the diary over the same period, and demonstrates that diary writing, among Soviet writers, poets, and literary critics, captured a mode of cognition that played a crucial role in propelling post-Stalin change as well.   

Wilson Center Project

The Origins of the Thaw: Thought and Literature under Stalin and Khrushchev