Dr. Alexander Valdman

Dr. Alex Valdman

Role: Researcher

Scope of Research:

Modern East European History, Jewish History, Russian and Soviet History, History of Education and Historical Education

Academic Background:

Dr. Alex Valdman is a social historian of modern Eastern Europe, focusing on questions of social and geographical mobility, patterns of imperial socialization, the history of the Russian-speaking Jews, and history of education. His first monograph, Problems of Discipline Secondary Education, Activism, and the Origins of the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Russian Empire, published by Magnes Press, has won the Shazar Prize for Research in Jewish History. His articles were published at Jewish Social Studies, The Russian Review, East European Jewish Affairs, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, Zion and other periodicals and collective volumes. He also took part in the publication of Zionist Organizations in Soviet Russia, 1917–1922. A Documentary History, a two-volume collection of archival sources published by an international group of scholars led by Prof. Ziva Galili.

His current research project, titled “Soviet Jews After Stalin: Local Experiences and Foreign Interpretations,” focuses on the history of Soviet Jews after 1953 and its representations in Israel and North America.

Selected Publications

Books:

Alex Valdman, Problems of Discipline: Secondary Education, Activism and the Origins of the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Russian Empire, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2023 (in Hebrew; recipient of the Shazar Prize for Research in Jewish History).
Travelogues of Israeli Visitors to the USSR: An Annotated Collection (in Hebrew; to be published as part of the Dorot Series of Mosad Bialik Press).

Articles:

“Public Transportation as a Maker and Marker of Modernity,” introduction to Jewish History and Public Transportation, a collective volume edited by Mordechai Naor and Emma Zohar (forthcoming; in Hebrew).
Alex Valdman, “Zionist Future in Revolutionary Russia: The Weekly “Ha’am” in February-April 1917” (accepted for publicaton; invited article for Imagining the Future in Russia´s February Revolution. Instant Voices in the Press Across the Empire, a collective volume edited by Franziska Schedewie and Dennis Dierks, University of Jena).
“The Jewish Communities and the Railroads in Galicia.” Article for the Historical Atlas of the Jews in Western Ukraine (forthcoming; invited article; English).
“The Colony that did not Come True: A New Outlook on the Emergence of Modern Jewish Elites in Tsarist Russia,” Zion 89, 2, 2024, pp.173-198 (in Hebrew, co-authored with Svetlana Natkovich, University of Haifa; recipient of the Am Ve-Olam Award for Outstanding Article).
“School, Empire, and the Provincial Roots of Civil Activism in Late Nineteenth Century Russia,” The Russian Review 82, 4, 2023, pp. 668-681.
Alex Valdman, “Israelis and Soviet Jews, 1953-1967: Towards a Dialogic Analysis,” in: Tanya Zion-Waldox and Ofir Abu (eds.), World Jewry – Views from Israel, Sde Boker: Ben-Gurion Research Institute and Ben-Gurion University, 2020, pp. 382-400 (in Hebrew).
Alex Valdman, “A Miracle in Minsk: Secondary Education and Social Mobility in the Pale of Settlement before 1887,” Jewish Social Studies 24, 2, 2019, pp. 135-156.
Alex Valdman, “Usable Past for an Uncertain Future: On the Historiographical Impulse of the Jewish Intelligentsia in Post-1905 Imperial Russia,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 16, 2017, pp. 15-34.
Alex Valdman, “Jewish Acculturation in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia: The Case of Yonah Berkhin,” East European Jewish Affairs 47, 1, 2017, pp. 28-44.
Alex Valdman, “Sha'ul Ginsburg and the Non-Radical Pattern in Jewish-Russian Historiography,” Zion 80, 4, 2015, pp. 521-549 (in Hebrew).
Alex Valdman, “The East vs. West Question in Berl Katsenelson's Lectures to the 'Socialist Youth' 1928,” Israelim 2, 2009, pp. 49-71 (in Hebrew).