Svetlana Chervonnaya
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the historian of Soviet-American espionage, not to be confused with Svetlana Mikhailovna Chervonnaya, a historian specializing in the republics of the Caucuses.
Svetlana Alexandrovna Chervonnaya (Russian: Светлана Aлександровна Червонная, born 1948) is a historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
living in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
specializing in the political history
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
period and Soviet
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....
espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
activities in the United States of America. Along with Ellen Schrecker
Ellen Schrecker
Ellen Wolf Schrecker, Ph.D. is a professor of American history at Yeshiva University. She is currently teaching and has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU....
, Chervonnaya is known as one of the leading scholarly voices arguing against post-Soviet American triumphalism
Triumphalism
Triumphalism is the attitude or belief that a particular doctrine, religion, culture, or social system is superior to and should triumph over all others...
. In the post-Soviet period, Chervonnaya has also established herself as an investigator and producer of documentary television shows seen in the United States, Germany, and Russia.
Early years
Svetlana Alexandrovna Chervonnaya was born in Moscow on October 14, 1948 of ethnic Jewish parents. Chervonnaya's ancestors hailed from the UkraineUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and Belorussia, having been forced to live in such places
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
during Tsarist times due to anti-semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
restrictions upon Jewish residence.
Chervonnaya's father was an investigator in the Procurator General's Office in Moscow, part of the People's Commissariat for Justice
Ministry of Justice (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Justice of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , formed on 15 March 1946, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly known as the People's Commissariat for Justice...
headed by Andrei Vyshinsky. He worked non-political cases including economic crimes, gang
Gang
A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...
crimes, and homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
cases. By the time Svetlana started school, he had left the Procurator's office and became a criminal defense attorney.
A great uncle on Svetlana's mother's side, Efim Dreizer, was a victim of the Great Terror
Great Terror
Great Terror may refer to:* Reign of Terror , a period of extreme violence during the French Revolution, last weeks of which are sometimes referred to as the Red Terror or Great Terror...
of the 1930s. He was arrested, confessed under duress, tried in the first Moscow show trial in 1936 and executed for purportedly participating in a criminal plot in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
directed by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
. His family were treated harshly as the family of a so-called "enemy of the people
Enemy of the people
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. The term implies that the "enemies" in question are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notion of "enemy of the state". The term originated in Roman times as ,...
" and met death and exile during the terror. They were "rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
" (restored to full citizenship rights) during Khrushchev's
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
"Thaw
Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
" of 1956-1958; Efim Dreizer was posthumously rehabilitated only in 1988, during Gorbachev's
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
Glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
campaign.
Chervonnaya graduated from secondary school in 1966 and enrolled in Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
in the department of history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, where she was admitted to the elite American history program on the basis of a competitive examination taken at the end of her second year. She specialized in the study of Franklin D. Roosevelt's
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and the post-World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
"New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
" in America, writing her diploma work on Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
and black nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
.
Chervonnaya married in 1970 and has two children, a daughter born in 1974 and a son born in 1987. Her husband, a physicist
Theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, died of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in 1989.
Soviet period
Upon completion of her university work, Chervonnaya was given a post as a member of the junior research staff at the Institute for US and Canadian StudiesInstitute for US and Canadian Studies
Institute for US and Canadian Studies - is a Russian think tank which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specializing on the comprehensive studies of the United States and Canada....
, the leading research institute for American studies in the Soviet Union, where she concentrated in the study of American political opposition movements. After two years she was promoted to the rank of Junior Fellow and became a Senior Fellow at age 33. She was awarded the Soviet equivalent of a Ph.D. degree in 1977 and remained at the institute for three decades.
Despite her post at the Institute of the USA and Canada, Chervonnaya decided not to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
, a fact which, combined with her Jewish heritage, made foreign travel impossible during the Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
era.
Chervonnaya's initial academic work related to the study of the contemporary black and Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
movements in the United States, about which she published repeatedly in the leading Soviet American studies
American studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the study of the United States. It traditionally incorporates the study of history, literature, and critical theory, but also includes fields as diverse as law, art, the media, film, religious studies, urban...
journal and in books.
Chervonnaya became interested in the spy cases of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
and Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
in the 1980s, at a time when such topics were regarded as off-limits in the USSR. Since the fall of the USSR in 1991, she has emerged as one of the preeminent specialists on the Espionage history of the USSR and the United States. In this capacity, Chervonnaya has been a consultant and contributor to a number of television documentaries, working as Associate Producer and research historian of "The Rosenberg File: Case Closed," the Moscow Field Producer of "Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies," as the Russian Production Coordinator of "Mystery of the U2" and other documentaries.
Post-Soviet period
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chervonnaya has worked as a freelance writer and producer of documentaryDocumentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
television programming, participating in the production of shows for broadcast in Russia, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and in the United States. In America, Chervonnaya's work has been seen on the Discovery channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
(1997), A&E History Channel (1999, 2000, 2001, 2003), and PBS (1999, 2002).
In 2009, backed by a grant from The Nation Institute, a foundation associated with the American magazine The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Chervonnaya launched a scholarly website on Soviet espionage in America, "DocumentsTalk." The site contains primary source
Primary source
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....
documents in pdf form, biographies of leading participants, as well as interpretative discussions. Since May, 2010, she is running the website on her own.
In March and April 2010, Chervonnaya was a visiting scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies
Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies
The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to the carry out studies of the Soviet Union , subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states....
, part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , located in Washington, D.C., is a United States Presidential Memorial that was established as part of the Smithsonian Institution by an act of Congress in 1968...
in Washington, DC.
Historical disputes
Chervonnaya's work in the field of espionage history has been the object of some debate. From the middle 1960s onward, scholarly debate on the history of Soviet-American relations and the history of the international Communist political movement has been divided into two more or less mutually exclusive camps — "traditionalism" and "revisionism." These two interpretative constructs are highly correlated with matters of contemporary politics, with "traditionalists" apt to be believers in traditionalist conservatismTraditionalist Conservatism
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and , "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, tradition, hierarchy and...
and "revisionists" apt to be liberal or radical critics of militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, new archival documents emerged and the battle over their meaning erupted anew. John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
and Harvey Klehr
Harvey Klehr
Harvey E. Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America ....
, two leading traditionalist voices in the field of espionage history, frame the ongoing battle between the two interpretative camps as follows:
"Revisionists dominate the academy, easily outnumber traditionalists, and control the most prominent historical journalsAcademic journalAn academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
. But traditionalist interpretations have been invigorated by the newly available archival evidence, more than a dozen scholarly books have appeared in the [first decade after the fall of the USSR] that take a traditionalist approach, and by any measure traditionalists are on the offensive. * * *
"No wonder revisionists insist on distorting what is in the archives, attempt to minimize explosive documents, and engage in crude and inappropriate name calling. They have a losing hand and are bluffing in the vain hope that other players will just lay down their winning cards."
The criticism of traditionalist historians has occasionally verged on ad hominem
Ad hominem
An ad hominem , short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it...
attacks. US Air Force historian Eduard Mark has called Chervonnaya "one of the USSR's more prolific propagandists in the twilight years of the USSR," while Haynes has similarly described Chervonnaya as a "Moscow historian/propagandist."
As a scholar who has explored recently-opened archival material on espionage and rejected several interpretations of documents regarded by some "traditionalists" as axiom
Axiom
In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...
atic, Chervonnaya remains a somewhat controversial counter-voice to what has been called the "Cold War triumphalism" of traditionalist scholars.
Select Books and chapter contributions
- As was commonplace among academic publishing in the Soviet Union, many of Chervonnaya's publications take the form of chapters written for collective book projects:
- "American Students in the Struggle for Civil Rights and Racial Justice," in USA: Students and Politics. Moscow: Nauka, 1974.
- "The Black American Movement" and "The Chicano Movement," in Mass Movements of Social Protest in the USA. Moscow: Nauka, 1978.
- "Domestic Factors in American Policy in the Third World," in The USA and Developing Countries in 1970s. Moscow: Nauka, 1981.
- Under a Code Name and Without. With Igor Geevsky. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1985.
- Race and Ethnicity in the Social and Political Life of the USA. With Igor Geevsky. Moscow: Nauka, 1985.
- The Black Americans, in the series "Social Science Today." Moscow: 1987.
- Constitution and the Rights of American Citizens, 1787-1987. Co-editor and co-author. Moscow: Mysl, 1987.
- The Resolution of Social Conflicts: American Experience. Editor and co-author. Moscow: USA & Canada Institute publication, 1998.
- "American Mosaic, or Can there be ‘Unum’ in ‘Pluribus?'" in America Coming into the Third Millennium. Moscow: Nauka, 2000.
- American Political System: Current Dimensions. Editor-in-chief and co-author. Moscow: Nauka, 2000.
Select Articles
- "The Life and Death of Malcolm X," in Modern and Contemporary History, no. 5, 1972. —co-author.
- "The Chicano Workers Effort at Labor Organizing," in Rabochii klass i sovremennyi mir (The Working Class and the Modern World), no. 5, 1976.
- "The U.S. Supreme Court and the Civil Rights," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 4, 1978.
- "Black Congressmen and Africa," in USA: EPI, no. 12, 1978.
- "Miami Events: Causes and Aftershocks," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 8, 1980.
- "The Deadlocks of Minority Politics," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 8, 1982.
- "The Jury in the American Court," in Soviet Justice, no. 21, 1986. —co-author.
- "The Critical Choices of Russia's Democracy," in William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 (Fall 1992).
- "American Labor in the Face of Change," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 9, 1993.
- "New Aspects of Labor-Management Regulation in the USA," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 2, 1995.
- "Protection of Minority Rights in the USA," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 7, 1995.
- "Where the Rosenbergs Guilty as Charged? The Soviet Ex-Agent Sheds a New Light on the Rosenberg Case," in New Times, March 23, 1997.
- "The Secrets of Arlington Hall: The Rosenberg Case through the Eyes of VENONA," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 8, 1997.
- "Can there be 'Unum' in 'Pluribus'? The Problems of American Identity Revisited," in USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, no. 10, 1997.
- "'We Are Patient': Moscow Can Shed Light on the Circumstances in the Rosenberg Case." Interview with Robert Meropol. Nezavisimaia Gazeta, July 11, 1998.
- "America Through the Mirror of Impeachment," in USA: Politics, Economics, Culture, November 1999. —co-author.
- "George Bush and the American Society,” in The Changing International Context and the Place of Russia: The Materials of “Expertise” Round-Table. Moscow: Gorbachev Foundation, 2001.
- "On the Threshold of the Progressive Era," in USA: Politics, Economics, Culture, February 2001. —co-author.
- "Rudolph Abel: The Legend of the Cold War," in Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, July 11, 2003. —co-author.
- "The Mystery of 'Ales'" (expanded web version), in The American Scholar, June 2007. —co-author.
Documentaries
- "The Rosenberg File: Case Closed," produced by Global American Television Inc. for Discovery Channel, 1997. —Investigator and associate producer.
- "Mystery of the U2," produced by Indigofilms for A&E History Channel, 1999. —Russian production coordinator.
- "Hugo Junkers Story," produced by Vidicom TV, Germany, 2000. —Russian field director.
- "History Undercover: Psychic Espionage," produced by Indigofilms for A&E History Channel, 2000. —Russian production coordinator.
- "Secrets, Lies and Atomic Spies," produced by WGBH and Powderhouse Productions for PBS's "Nova," 2002. —Russian field producer.
- "POW Generals (Nazi Generals in Soviet Captivity)," produced by Dialog Studio for KULTURA Channel, Moscow, 2002.
- "Soviet UFO Sightings," produced by Bill Brummel Productions for A&E History Channel, 2003. —Russian field producer.
- "Rokovoe reshenie" (The Fateful Decision), produced by Studio 2V for RGTRK, Moscow. First broadcast, March 2004. —Writer and producer.
- "Russia – America," 3 parts of an 11-part documentary series, Duel’ razvedok (Duel of the Intelligence Services), produced by Studio 2V for RGTRK, Moscow, 2005. —Writer and producer.
- "Posly surovoi pory" (The Ambassadors of Stormy Times), produced by Aquila TV for TVRC, Petersburg, 2010. —Co-writer.
External links
- Svetlana Chervonnaya's page on Facebook. Facebook.com
- Svetlana Chervonnaya, Documents Talk website, DocumentsTalk.com. —Primary source documents and interpretative essays on Cold War history.