Robert W. Thurston is an American historian, who is Professor of Historty at Miami University

Miami University

Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...

 in Oxford, Ohio

Oxford, Ohio

Oxford is a city in northwestern Butler County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern portion of the state. It lies in Oxford Township, originally called the College Township. The population was 21,943 at the 2000 census. This college town was founded as a home for Miami University. Oxford...

. Thurston is known for primarily working in the field of Sovietology, the historical study of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, although has also written on the subject of the Witch trials in the Early Modern period. He has published a variety of papers and books upon these topics.

In November 1992, he publicly argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the June 1992 exhibit entitled "Revelations from the Russian Archives", which was held at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

, was overly biased against the Soviet Union. He remarked that the "library's accompanying glossy brochure highlighted only the repressive nature of the Soviet regime, ignoring its positive (though flawed) accomplishments." He noted that "Nothing appeared on the growth of education, upward social mobility, increased availability of medical care, urbanization or anything that might be considered positive." He went on to accuse James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, of advocating "a single point of view" about the Soviet Union. The reporter Arnold Beichman, writing for the right wing Insight on the News newspaper, condemned Thurston for these statements, arguing that "something is drastically wrong with American social sciences" if the Chronicle of Higher Education allowed his comments to be published.

Sovietology

• Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia's Urban Crisis, 1906-1914 (1987). Oxford University Press.
• Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 (1996). Yale University Press.
• The People's War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union (2000); anthology, edited by Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch. University of Illinois Press.

Early Modern Witchcraft

• Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose: The Rise and Fall of the Witch Hunts in Europe and North America (2001). Longman.
  • Republished as The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America (2006). Longman.

American History

• Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective (2011). Ashgate. Link to a description of the book and to purchasing information:

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409409083

Coffee

• Coffee: A Handbook under contract with Rowman and Littlefield, scheduled for 2012.