Geoffrey Hosking

Daniel Snowman meets the historian of Russia and its peoples.

When I first met Geoffrey Hosking in the 1970s, he was a lecturer in History at the University of Essex but his current enthusiasm was Russian literature. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky? No, he said: recent and present-day Russian literature. Dissident literature, then – all that samizdat stuff? Again, no. He was interested in novelists published in the USSR of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, some of whom, he said, were really rather good. Here, evidently, was a man who sidestepped the stereotypes.
 

To continue reading this article you need to purchase a subscription, available from only £5.

Start my trial subscription now

If you have already purchased access, or are a print & archive subscriber, please ensure you are logged in.

Please email digital@historytoday.com if you have any problems.