Peter Fraunholtz

Pete Fraunholtz teaches courses for the History Department, International Affairs, and the Global Studies MA Program. Recent and upcoming courses focus on The Vietnam Wars, The World in a Decade: 1990s, Emerging Economies, History of the Soviet Union, and The Mediterranean World. Professor Fraunholtz’s academic work experience has included travel to Germany, Russia (for nearly two years in the early 1990s), France, Turkey, Hungary, China, and, for many of the last 12 years, Morocco as Faculty Leader for the NU Dialogue of Civilization program. His research scholarship focuses on Revolutionary Russia, specifically civil war-era food supply and grain procurement challenges and policies, primarily in the Middle Volga region, 1918-1920. Based on primary research conducted in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the Middle Volga province of Penza, his work challenges key aspects of the standard Western narrative concerning the Bolsheviks’ approach to the Russian countryside during the civil war years.

Recent Publications

“Russian Grain Procurement in a Revolutionary State: Grain Registration in Penza Province, 1917–1919” in Journal of Agricultural History (Forthcoming, February 2024).

 “From Ambivalence to Accuracy: The Provisional Government’s Grain Registration in an Intermediary Province, Penza 1917.” The Russian Review 2024, 1-16.

 “Peasants in the Russian Revolution: Adaption, Anxiety, Action” in Alston, Hickey, Kolonitskii, Schedewie, Swain, eds. Handbook on the Russian Revolution (London: Bloomsbury, 2023)

“Ruling the Soviet Countryside Behind the Frontlines:  Grain Procurement in Late Civil War-era Penza Province, Fall, 1920,” in Russian History/Histoire Russe 49, no. 1 (2022): 1-24.

 “Crisis and Pragmatism: The Evolution of the Soviet Procurement Apparatus in Civil War-era Penza, 1919-1920” in Revolutionary Russia 35, no. 1 (2022): 110-130.

Recent Presentations

“Complicating the Food Supply Dictatorship: The Kuchka Uprising and Center-Periphery Dynamics at the Outset of the Russian Civil War.” Paper presented at the National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Philadelphia, November 2023.

 “Consumption Norms and Household Assessment: Grain Registration and the Dilemma of Wartime Grain Procurement in Penza (Russia), 1917-1919.”  Paper presented virtually at the Annual Meeting of the Agricultural History Society, June 2023.

“The Kuchka Uprising and Center-Periphery Dynamics at the Outset of the Russian Civil War.” Paper presented at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, New York, April 2023.

“Wartime Grain Procurement in a Modernizing State: Grain Registration in Penza Province, 1917-1919.” Paper presented virtually at the National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, October 2022.

“Trying to See Like a State: The Rise and Fall of Grain Registration, Penza Province, 1917-1919.” Paper presented at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, New York, April 2022.

Recent Courses Taught

Russian Foreign Policy

History of the Soviet Union

The Vietnam Wars

Global Cold War

The World Since 1945

The Mediterranean World