Gabriel Gorodetsky
Encyclopedia
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
. Prof. Gorodetsky studied History and Russian Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and went on to obtain his Ph.D degree under the supervision of the renowned British historian E.H. Carr in Oxford. He was the director of the Cummings Center for Russian Studies at Tel Aviv University from 1991-2007. He has been a visiting fellow of St. Antony's College in Oxford in 1979 and in 1993, 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 in 1986, of All Souls in Oxford in 2006 and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Professor Gorodetsky was also a visiting professor at the universities of Munich and Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
, and at the Central European University
Central European University
For other uses, see European University Central European University is a graduate-level, English-language university offering degrees in the social sciences, humanities, law, public policy, business management, environmental science, and mathematics...
in Budapest. In 2010 Prof. Gorodetsky received an honorary doctorate from the Russian State University for the Humanities
Russian State University for the Humanities
The Russian State University for the Humanities , is a university in Moscow, Russia with over 5500 students. It was created in 1991 as the result of the merger of the Moscow Public University and the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives The Russian State University for the Humanities...
in Moscow.
He is married to Dr. Ruth Herz, a judge in Cologne, judge in the RTL TV series "Das Jugendgericht" (2001–2005), research fellow of the Centre of Criminology at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, author of "Recht Persönlich" (Beck, 2006) and "The Art of Justice: The Judge's Perspective" (forthcoming by Hart Publishers, Oxford).
Research
In his major work Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (Yale University Press, 1999) Gorodetsky, employing rare sources from the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Soviet General Staff, the NKVD, the GRU, as well as from Bulgarian, Yugoslav, British and German archives, unfolds the events leading to the German invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941.According to Gorodetsky's version Stalin saw Hitler as his own mirror reflection, committed to realpolitik and eager to improve the Soviet Union's national status which it had lost as a result of the disasters which were inflicted on her during the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
, Stalin believed he could bring about a change in the European balance of power. When he learnt through his intelligence of Hitler's aggressive intentions, in late 1930s, the dismal state of the military, decapitated through the purges of the 1930s
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
, he had no choice but to resort to appeasement hoping he could either delay the war or reach a second agreement with Hitler. Even the suggestion by his Chief of Staff to launch a counter-offensive was discarded by the Soviet dictator, according to Gorodetsky.
Gorodetsky's analysis has been hailed in the West as a breakthrough in the study of Soviet military and diplomatic policies on the eve of the war.
Prof. Gorodetsky is currently engaged in preparing an annotated publication for Yale University Press of the unique and extraordinary diaries of Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London from 1932-1943.
Books
- The Precarious Truce: Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1924-1927 (Cambridge University Press, 1977, reissued in 2008). (284 pp.)
- Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1991: A Retrospective (Frank Cass, London, 1994) (227 pp.)
- Stafford Cripps' Mission to Moscow, 1940-1942 (Cambridge University Press, 1984) (361 pp.) (Revised reprint in paperback, Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Mif Ledokola (Moscow, Progress, 1995) (350 pp.). (In Russian: The Icebreaker Myth).
- Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (Yale, University Press, 1999) (550 pp.). (paperback edition, 2001)
- Le Grand Jeu de Dupes (French translation, Belles Lettres, Paris, 2000) (573 pp.).
- Self-Deception: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (Hebrew translation, Ma'arachot, Tel Aviv, 1999) (450 pp.)
- Rokovoi samoobman. Stalin i napadenie Germanii na Sovetskii soiuz (Russian translation, Rospen, Moscow, 1999, reissued 2009)
- Die Täuschung: Stalin, Hitler und das “Unternehmen Barbarossa” (German translation, Siedler, Berlin, 2001) paperback edition, 2001)
Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 1941-1953 (2 vols.)(Cass, London, 2000) (998 pp.)
- with W. Weidenfeld, Regional Security in the Wake of the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Europe and the Middle East (Europa Union Verlag, Munich, 2002)
- Russia between East and West: Russian Foreign Policy on the Threshold of the 21st Century (Cass, London, 2003)
- Stafford Cripps in Moscow 1940-42, Diary and Papers (Valentine and Mitchel, 2007)
- The Diaries of Ivan Maisky, Soviet Ambassador to Britain, 1932-1943 (forthcoming, Yale University Press)