Professor Jonathan Haslam

Jonathan Haslam was the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study from 2015 to 2021. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Professor Emeritus in the History of International Relations at Cambridge University. Haslam is the author of a biography of a celebrated and controversial public intellectual and historian of Soviet Russia, E.H. Carr. Haslam’s most recent book is Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). He is now completing The Spectre of War. This revises our understanding of the origins of the Second World War by focusing on the role of Communism and anti-Communism in the rise of fascism and the reaction to it. It makes extensive use of Comintern archives as well as diplomatic archives Europe-wide. Princeton University Press takes receipt in 2019. Haslam also publishes a blog, throughrussianeyes.com, which highlights and analyses articles in the Russian press on Russia’s secret intelligence as well as foreign and defence policies. He is married to Karina Urbach, the German historian and prize-winning novelist.