Emeritus Professor Bob Davies

Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies
Emeritus Professor, Senior Fellow

Contact details

Email
r.w.davies@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Centre for Russian and East European Studies
School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham,
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Qualifications

  • B.A. School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of  London 1950
  • PhD Commerce and Social Science, University of Birmingham 1954, supervised by Alexander Baykov

Biography

  • Served in RAF 1943-6 (Middle East 1945-6)
  • After completing PhD, appointed assistant lecturer in Institute of Soviet Studies, Glasgow. Returned to Birmingham in 1956, where he was successively Research Fellow, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer
  • Foundation Director of CREES, 1963-78, Professor of Soviet Economic Studies 1965-89
  • Editor with colleagues of CREES series Studies in Soviet and East European History and Society, published by Macmillan/Palgrave, over fifty titles
  • Retired 1989, since when he has been Senior Fellow and Emeritus Professor in CREES
  • Honorary Life Member of BASEES and Vice-President of the Society for Cooperation in Russian Studies

Postgraduate supervision

Available to supervise postgraduate work on Soviet economic history

Research

Main fields: Soviet science and innovation, historiography and economic history of inter-war years

  • In 1958-59 collaborated with EH Carr on his History of Soviet Russia,volumes dealing with economic development of USSR, 1926-1929
  • Worked on OECD, ESRC/SSRC, Leverhulme and Volkswagen projects with Ronald Amann, Julian Cooper, Stephen Wheatcroft, Arfon Rees, Melanie Ilic and others from 1967 to 2010;
  • Since the late 1970s his main research has been a detailed study of the industrialisation of the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1939

Publications

Books include:

The Development of the Soviet Budgetary System (1958).

(with E H Carr) Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929 (1969, pbk edn 1974)

(with E.Zaleski et al.) Science Policy in the USSR, OECD, 1969; French, German, Japanese translations also published.

(with R.Amann and J.M.Cooper, eds.) The Technological Level of Soviet Industry (1977).

The Socialist Offensive: the Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-1930 (1980) (translated into Japanese).

The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929‑1930 (1980).

The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929‑1930 (1989).

Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution (1989). also in Japanese, German and Portuguese.

Crisis and Progress in the Soviet Economy, 1931-1933 (1996).

Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (1997), also in Japanese.

Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev (New Studies in Economic and Social History) (1998).

(with S.G. Wheatcroft) The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture,1931-1933 (2004, revised pbk edn 2010, Russian-language edn.2011)

(with O. Khlevnyuk, E A Rees and others) Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska, 1931-1936 (English language edition: The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-1936 (2004)

View all publications in research portal