Professor of Russian history at Colorado University, Denver (since 1995).

major publications

• Peter Arkad’evich Stolypin: Practical Politics in Late Tsarist Russia, Boulder: Westview Press, 1977.
• Women Pharmacists in Late Imperial Russia. in Linda Edmondson, ed. , Women & Society in Russia & The Soviet Union, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 48-76.
• In Health & In Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists & the Pharmaceutical Industry in Late Imperial, Early Soviet Russia, Dist. Columbia University Press, 1994.
• Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia, Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1998 (edition).
• The Russian Pharmaceutical Industry in the Late Imperial-Early Soviet Period,” in Politics and Society Under the Bolsheviks, Kevin McDermott and John Morison, eds., Basingstoke: MacMillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, pp. 13-36.
• The Soviet Pharmaceutical Business during Its First Two Decades (1917–1937), New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
• Medicines for the Soviet Masses during World War II, University Press of America, 2008.
   

relevant publications

• Review of Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict, The Social Science Journal, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 481-483.

Source: Review of Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict, The Social Science Journal, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 481-483

"Dadrian claims that Armenians were more oppressed than these groups because they were not allowed to bear arms and had no outside protectors. Furthermore, the Ottoman government allowed Kurds and Islamic migrants from the Balkans and the Caucasus to harass Armenians. His argument, however, is marred by inconsistency and ambiguity. He notes, for instance, the appointment of Armenians to central and local government posts in 1876, periodically refers to the Armenian diaspora, and admits that Armenian merchants, upper echelons of the Armenian clergy and ‘conservative’ Armenians preferred Ottoman rule to Russian (Russia ruled a slice of Armenia following the 1827-1828 Russo-Turkish War) because they believed this would better preserve Armenian identity. Indeed, Armenian deputies in the Ottoman Parliament spoke out against Russia. The author tells us nothing, however, about the conditions within the Ottoman Empire which produced the Armenian elites, nor does he elaborate on these issues. Similarly, Dadrian mentions Armenian revolutionaries, the Huntchaks and the Dashnaks, some of whom engaged in raids on the Ottoman Bank in the mid-1890s, and he concedes that their numbers were small and that the bulk of Armenians repudiated them. However, he does not develop the impact these revolutionaries may have had on Ottoman government policies, particularly the reluctance to let Armenians bear arms. Further, Dadrian does not identify the Huntchaks as Marxists nor the Dashnaks as extreme nationalists. In chapter 10 Dadrian informs us that several thousand Armenians fought for Turkey in World War I but, again, does not develop this theme." P. 482.

"Although Dadrian appears fluent in Turkish and cites certain Turkish sources — dissident Ittihadist reports, memoirs of a few Turkish leaders, and statements from a post-World War I war-crimes tribunal — almost no information on Turkish government policies regarding Armenians and nothing on the decision to annihilate them comes from Turkish archival sources. Dadrian relies mainly on British Foreign Office and German, Austrian, and French reports. When discussing how the Turks unleashed Kurds to attack Armenians in the mid-1890s, Dadrian even quotes a U.S. senator's castigation of this event as supporting evidence. Similarly, he cites the Russian newspaper Golos moskvy (incorrectly transliterated ‘Kolos Moskoy’) as one of the sources for a ‘secret Turko-German plan for the massive deportation of the Armenians of eastern Turkey’ along with a Western historian's ruminations on how important cultural homogeneity was to the Turks, as proof of the Armenian massacres of 1915. Dadrian’s excuse for not documenting Turkish policies with internal governmental sources is that the policies were secret. However, since much evidence exists in Russian archives about secret policies, one cannot but be skeptical about this explanation.

A few typos and small factual errors, such as the implication that Russian-Ottoman relations were always adversarial in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mar the book. However, the most egregious flaws in this book are its polemical tone, its sketchiness, and its failure to use Turkish archival sources. Therefore, while the book delivers intriguing insights into Ottoman-Kurdish relations and the views of individual Turkish statesmen regarding Armenians, and while it suggests convincing theories for Turkish massacres of Armenians, it does not convincingly document these theories. It is thus unsatisfying as a whole. This book is more a work of journalism than solid history and is not recommended." P. 483.