On 12th August 2020 our former Chairman and Talks Organiser, Daniel Salbstein, passed away. We were all shocked to hear this sad news. Daniel’s role in the creation of the Society and its subsequent development has been immense, and without him its existence would be unlikely. In the light of Daniel’s unique contribution, we announced at the Annual Members Meeting on 22nd March this year that it would be a worthy tribute to commemorate him in a permanent way through an Annual Daniel Salbstein Memorial Lecture, to be delivered by a suitably prestigious speaker.
We are deeply honoured that Great Britain-Russia Society’s Honorary President, Professor Geoffrey Hosking, has kindly agreed to deliver the Inaugural Lecture. This is particularly fitting, as it was Daniel Salbstein who invited Professor Hosking to be our Honorary President.
The title of Professor Hosking’s talk is “Soviet Literature Turns to the Past”.
Professor Geoffrey Hosking is one of the most eminent British historians of Russia and the Soviet Union and has had a distinguished academic career, as well as writing a number of authoritative books on Russian and Soviet history .
He studied Russian at King's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded an MA, before studying Russian history at Moscow State University. He then studied European history at St. Antony's College, Oxford, before receiving a PhD in modern Russian history at Cambridge.
He taught at the University of Essex as a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and then Reader from 1966 to 1984, before joining the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College, London, where he held the chair of Russian History as Emeritus Professor from 1984 to 2007. He also held a Leverhulme Research Professorship in Russian History at SSEES from 1999 to 2004.
He has been a visiting lecturer in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a research fellow at Columbia University's Russian Institute, and a visiting professor at the University of Cologne.
In 1988 he presented the BBC Reith Lectures, in the course of which he explained the dramatic changes of the Mikhail Gorbachev era with reference to their historical context.
To mention but two of his published works on the pre-Soviet period, his books Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 (1998) and Russia and the Russians (2001) are both widely recognised for their comprehensive coverage and immaculate attention to detail, as well as being eminently readable.
Professor Hosking was awarded the OBE in the 2015 New Year Honours List for services to higher education and to students. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.