Catherine Merridale

Catherine Anne Merridale, FBA (born 12 October 1959) is a British writer and historian with a special interest in Russian history.

Early life and education

Merridale was born on 12 October 1959 to Philip and Anne Merridale.

In an interview with The Independent, Merridale recalls how she became interested in Russia and its past. She began studying Russian in school and first visited the country at the age of 18. She said of her first impression of Russia, "Going from the then ghastly Soviet airport, everything in Moscow was grey and cold and hard. Suddenly in the middle of the city were these golden cupolas and enormous redbrick walls with peculiar swallowtail battlement pattern that didn’t look Russian, but did at the same time."[5] When she began work on her higher degrees, Merridale spent a year living in Moscow and observing the changes occurring during that time.^[5] In another interview with Waterstones.com, Merridale summarises her perspective of Russian history, "my message is that we have to take each generation of Russian leaders as they are and not keep assuming that Russia is fated to follow a special path and will always be the same. That there is a Russian destiny."^[6]

Later career

Having retired from her academic career, Merridale became a

• Merridale, Catherine (1990). Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925-32. New York: St. Martin's Press.
  OCLC 21337606
  .
• Merridale, Catherine (2001). Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia. New York: Viking.
  OCLC 44573540
  .
• Merridale, Catherine (2006). Culture and Combat Motivation. London: Sage Publications.
  OCLC 67636955
  .
• Merridale, Catherine (2006). Ivan's War: life and death in the Red Army, 1939-1945. New York: Metropolitan Books.
  OCLC 60671899
  .
• Merridale, Catherine (2013). Red fortress: history and illusion in the Kremlin. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Volt and Company.
  OCLC 827256860
  .
• Merridale, Catherine (2016). Lenin on the Train. UK: Penguin.
  OCLC 944462944
  .

• UK Heinemann Award for Literature for Night of Stone^[8][10][11]
• New York Military Affairs Symposium's Arthur Goodzeit Prize for best book on Military History for Ivan's War^[2][12][13]
• Pushkin House Book Prize for Red Fortress^[14][5]
• Wolfson History Prize for Red Fortress^[15]
• She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences, in 2016.^[16]

References