About Ivan Kurilla

Ivan Kurilla is a historian of U.S.–Russia relations, national identity, and the political uses of history. He previously taught at Volgograd State University and the European University at St. Petersburg and has held appointments at Dartmouth College, George Washington University, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and Middlebury College. In 2024 he left Russia after being dismissed for opposing the war in Ukraine and is now based in the United States as a visiting scholar. Kurilla is the author or editor of numerous books, including Transoceanic Partners: America and Russia in the 1830s–1850s and Bitva za proshloe: Kak politika menyaet istoriyu [The Battle for the Past: How Politics Changes History]. His book Amerikantsy i vse ostal’nye: Istoki i smysl vneshnei politiki SShA (Americans and All the Rest: Origin and Meaning of U.S. Foreign Policy, Alpina, 2024) won the Enlightener (Prosvetitel) Prize in the Humanities as the year’s best Russian-language nonfiction book. premiaprosvetitel.ruРадио Свобода He publishes in leading Russian and international journals and contributes regularly to international media.

Selected books (English)

• Ivan Kurilla, ed., Carl W. Ackerman, Trailing the Bolsheviki: Twelve Thousand Miles with the Allies in Siberia (Slavica, 2020).
• Ivan Kurilla and Victoria I. Zhuravleva, eds., Russian/Soviet Studies in the United States, Amerikanistika in Russia: Mutual Representations in Academic Projects (Lexington, 2016).

Selected books (Russian)

• Amerikantsy i vse ostal’nye: Istoki i smysl vneshnei politiki SShA (Alpina, 2024). premiaprosvetitel.ru
• Bitva za proshloe: Kak politika menyaet istoriyu (Alpina, 2022).
• Istoriya, ili Proshloe v nastoyashchem (EU Press, 2017).
• Zaklyatye druz’ya: Istoriya mneniy, fantazii, kontaktov, vzaimo(ne)ponimaniya Rossii i SShA (NLO, 2018).

Current Research Projects

At publication stage

• Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of American–Russian Relations (with David Foglesong and Victoria Zhuravleva), Cambridge University Press, forthcoming October 2025.
• Echoes of the American Civil War Abroad (collective volume, co-edited with Victoria Zhuravleva), Bloomsbury, forthcoming April 2026.
• The Battle for the Past: How Politics Rewrites History (English translation of Bitva za proshloe), under contract with Palgrave Macmillan (manuscript in preparation).

At research stage

• Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Russian History (co-editor with Vladimir Gel’man and Sari Autio-Sarasmo; contract with Routledge).
• Russia and the American Civil War (book-length project).