Orlando Figes

Orlando Figes, one of the most prominent figures in contemporary British historiography and an authority on Russian history, was born in London in 1959 and studied history at the University of Cambridge. His academic work quickly positioned him among the leading British experts on Russian history. However, he became widely known to the general reading public through two books that, aside from their scholarly validity and groundbreaking insights, were characterized by a direct and captivating style: "A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924" and the classic in its genre, "Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia." Today, Orlando Figes teaches at Birkbeck, University of London, and regularly writes book reviews for The Guardian and the London Review of Books. In 1997, he was awarded the Wolfson History Prize. Other works include: "Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-21," 1989, and "Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917," 1999, co-authored with Boris Kolonitskii.