ronald-suny

7 Articles by: Ronald Suny

Ronald Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of history at the University of Michigan, emeritus professor of political science and history at the University of Chicago, and senior researcher at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His most recent book is Stalin: Passage to Revolution (2020).

How Joseph Stalin Became a Bolshevik

Ronald Suny’s Stalin: Passage to Revolution traces Joseph Stalin’s trajectory from his boyhood in Georgia to the Russian Revolution in 1917. In an interview, Suny explains the specificities of the Georgian socialist movement, Stalin’s role in the revolution, and why Stalinism was “bloody, ruthless,” and “the nadir of the Soviet experiment.”