Avrich, Paul 1931–2006
Avrich, Paul 1931–2006
(Paul Henry Avrich)
OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born August 4, 1931, in New York, NY; died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, February 16, 2006, in New York, NY. Historian, educator, and author. A retired professor at Queens College of the City University of New York, Avrich was an authority on Russian history who specialized in the study of anarchist movements. Graduating from Cornell University in 1952, he did his graduate work at Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1961. When Soviet Union president Nikita Khrushchev started allowing foreign students into the country, Avrich took advantage of the opportunity to conduct research in the Soviet Union, too. He joined the Queens College faculty in 1960, becoming a full professor of history in 1970 and retiring in 1999, having spent his entire academic career there. Avrich had great sympathy for anarchists' beliefs about the evils of government and that people were better off without political leaders. His history texts focus on anarchism in Russia and the United States. Among his titles are The Russian Anarchists (1967), An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre (1978), The Haymarket Tragedy (1984), and Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (1996).
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New York Times, February 24, 2006, p. A23.