External links
- "Papers of R.W. Davies: Preliminary Handlist", University of Birmingham, Special Collections.
R. W. Davies | |
|---|---|
| Born | Robert William Davies 23 April 1925 London, England |
| Died | 13 April 2021 (aged 95) |
| Education | University of London University of Birmingham |
| Scientific career | |
| Workplaces | University of Birmingham |
| Thesis | The development of the Soviet budgetary system, 1917–1941 (1954) |
| Alexander Baykov | |
Doctoral students | Julian Cooper Catherine Merridale Richard Sakwa |
Robert William "Bob" Davies (23 April 1925 – 13 April 2021), better known as R. W. Davies, was a British historian, writer and professor of Soviet economic studies at the University of Birmingham.
Obtaining his PhD in 1954, Davies was promoted to full professor and made chair of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham in 1965. He retired from active teaching in 1988.
A collaborator and co-author with historian E. H. Carr on two volumes of his 14-volume History of Soviet Russia, Davies is best known for having carried Carr's work forward into the 1930s with seven additional volumes of economic history under the general title The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia.
Davies was educated at the Westcliff High School for Boys in Essex. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain during the 1930s. During World War II, he served in radio communications in the Royal Air Force from 1943 to 1946. He was stationed in Egypt from 1945 to 1946.
Davies obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London in 1950. He subsequently attended the University of Birmingham, where he obtained his PhD in 1954 in Commerce and Social Science under the supervision of the Russian émigré economist Alexander Baykov (1899–1963), a close pre-war associate of Sergei Prokopovich. His interests shifted from Kievan Rus' to history of the Soviet Union under Baykov's influence.
After completing his PhD, Davies was appointed to a post as assistant lecturer at the Institute of Soviet Studies at the University of Glasgow, where he would remain until his return to the University of Birmingham in 1956. He traveled to Moscow for the first time soon after Nikita Khrushchev's On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences speech of February 1956, and quit the CPGB after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in the autumn of the same year. At Birmingham Davies held a succession of academic titles, including research fellow, lecturer, and senior lecturer. He began his collaboration with E. H. Carr at the latter's invitation in 1958.
In 1963, Davies was named the first director of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham — a post which he would retain until 1978 or 1979. He was appointed a professor of Soviet Economic Studies by the University of Birmingham in 1965. He served as a committee member of the National Association for Soviet and East European Studies (NASEES) from 1963 to 1977. He became a supporter of the Labour Party in the 1960s and participated in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was an occasional contributor to the New Left Review from the 1980s onwards.
Davies retired in September 1988 and was made senior fellow and emeritus professor at Birmingham upon his departure from active teaching. He was active on the British Academic Committee for Cooperation with Russian Archives (BACCRA) during the 1990s.
His research contributions in Soviet history are recognized by the peers. Davies' papers are housed in the Special Collections department of the University of Birmingham. A temporary register of the Davies' collection, contained in 70 archival boxes, is available.
Davies died in April 2021 at the age of 95.
For an extensive list of articles by R.W. Davies, see Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie, and E.A. Rees (eds.), Soviet History, 1917–53: Essays in Honour of R.W. Davies. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995; pp. 264–267.
