BARON, Samuel H(askell) 1921-

PERSONAL: Born May 24, 1921, in New York, NY; son of James (a clothier) and Dinah (Bader) Baron; married M. Virginia Wilson; children: Sheila, Carla, Laura. Education: Cornell University, B.S., 1942; Columbia University, M.A., 1948, Ph.D., 1952; postgraduate work in East Asian studies, Harvard University.

ADDRESSES: Home—5 Marilyn Lane, Chapel Hill, NC 27514. Office—University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.

CAREER: University of Tennessee at Knoxville, instructor in history, 1948-50, 1951-53; Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, assistant professor, 1956-57, associate professor, 1957-63, professor of history, 1963-66; University of California, San Diego, professor, 1966-72; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, alumni distinguished professor, 1972-87, professor emeritus, 1987—. Visiting lecturer in history, Northwestern University, 1953-54; visiting assistant professor of history, University of Missouri, 1954-55, and University of Nebraska, 1955-56; visiting professor, Claremont College; faculty adviser for student exchange program with the Soviet Union, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Military service: U.S. Army, 1942-46; became captain.

MEMBER: American Historical Association, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, American Association of University Professors (national council member, 1963-65), American Civil Liberties Union, Conference on Slavic and Eastern European History (chairman, 1975).

AWARDS, HONORS: Ford Foundation fellowship, mid-1950s; Distinguished Scholar Award, Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, 1983; grants from Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, Guggenheim Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1987, the Samuel H. Baron professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was established as part of the Margaret and Paul A. Johnson Professorships.

WRITINGS:

Plekhanov, the Father of Russian Marxism, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1963.

(Editor and translator) Adam Olearius, The Travels ofOlearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1967.

(Editor, with others) Windows on the Russian Past:Essays on Soviet Historiography since Stalin, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Columbus, OH), 1977.

Muscovite Russia: Collected Essays, Variorium (London, England), 1980.

(Editor, with Carl Pletsch) Introspection in Biography:The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, Analytic Press (Hillsdale, NJ), 1985.

Explorations in Muscovite History, Variorum (London, England), 1991.

Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1995.

(Editor, with Nancy Shields Kollmann) Religion andCulture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, Northern Illinois University Press (DeKalb, Illinois), 1997.

Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk,1962, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2001.

Contributor to periodicals, including Russian Review. Baron's work has been translated into Japanese, Spanish, and Russian.

SIDELIGHTS: In 1963 Samuel H. Baron made his mark in the world of history with his first book, Plekhanov, the Father of Russian Marxism, which is still considered to be the definitive biography of Russian philosopher and revolutionary Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov. Now emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Baron continues to write about Russian and Soviet history and historiography.

Baron returned to the topic of Plekhanov in 1995, when he published Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography. A collection of eleven essays which were originally published between 1957 and 1986, Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography presents "a discerning view of Plekhanov's historical thought," Marian J. Rubchak noted in a review for Historian. Rubchak had particular praise for the final essay, "My Life with G. V. Plekhanov," which traces Baron's lifelong scholarly association with the man and "affords some marvelous insights into Plekhanov's personality," Rubchak claimed.

In Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962, published in 2001, Baron examines an event that foreshadowed the ultimate downfall of the Soviet system. The incident began when the government of Nikita Khrushchev raised the price of food. In response, workers at the Electric Locomotive Construction Works (NEVZ) at Novocherkassk revolted. The town, in a region along the Don River settled by Cossacks, had been a center of anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the years 1917-20, and now its workers rose up against the long-established Soviet state. The Khrushchev regime acted brutally to suppress the uprising, leaving more than twenty people dead and buried in secret graves, plus hundreds more wounded. In Baron's analysis, this uprising is compared to the 1905 "Bloody Sunday" workers' strike, which nearly brought down the czarist regime.

Praising the book as "the first in-depth, English-language analysis" of these events, Bowen noted that "Baron's contributions to understanding the flaws of the Soviet system of government are both novel and significant." Harry Willems, reviewing the book for Library Journal, commented favorably on its accessibility: "Though the subject is academic, the presentation is accessible to lay readers; this reader didn't want it to end so soon."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1998, Carol B. Stevens, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 1649.

Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, winter, 1998, review of Introspection in Biography: The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, p. 79.

Catholic Historical Review, January, 1999, Joseph L. Wieczynski, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 77.

Choice, March, 2002, G. E. Snow, review of BloodySaturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962, p. 1301.

Church History, March, 1998, John D. Basil, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 182.

English Historical Review, February, 1999, Maureen Perrie, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 191.

Historian, fall, 1997, Marian J. Rubchak, review of Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography, pp. 152-153.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 1998, Dennis R. Papazian, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 88; fall, 2001, James D. Bowen, review of Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union, p. 30.

Journal of Church and State, spring, 1998, Dennis Reinhartz, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, pp. 484-485.

Journal of Economic Literature, June, 1996, review of Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography, p. 830.

Library Journal, July, 2001, Harry Willems, review of Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union, p. 106.

Reference and Research Book News, March, 1996, review of Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography, p. 39; May, 1998, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 11.

Religious Studies Review, July, 1986, review of Introspection in Biography, p. 262.

Reviews of New Books, winter, 1998, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 88.

Russian Review, April, 1997, Donald Senese, review of Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography, pp. 306-307; April, 2002, Hiroaki Kuromiya, review of Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union, p. 326.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 1999, Paul W. Knoll, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, pp. 589-592.

Slavic and East European Review, April, 1993, W. F. Ryan, review of Explorations in Muscovite History, pp. 330-331.

Slavic Review, fall, 1992, Paul Bushkovitch, review of Explorations in Muscovite History, p. 611; winter, 1996, Philip Pomper, review of Plekhanov in Russian History, p. 918; summer, 1998, Paul Bushkovitch, review of Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, p. 444.