Historical Figures Codexery

Robert Conquest

British historian and Sovietologist, author of The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow.

He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1937 but broke with it when the party denounced the war in 1939.[1][2] Conquest was commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on 20 April 1940.[2] After the war, he joined the Foreign Office and later the Information Research Department, a propaganda unit created by the Labour government.[3][4] In 1968 he published The Great Terror, the first comprehensive research of the Great Purge.[5]

Conquest's birthplace was Great Malvern, Worcestershire; his father was American and his mother English.[6] Within British literary circles, Conquest played a significant role in a group referred to as "The Movement".[7] Conquest passed away in Stanford, California, during 2015, having reached the age of 98.[8]

Quick Facts

Birth name
George Robert Acworth Conquest
Born
15 July 1917
Birthplace
Great Malvern, Worcestershire, England
Died
3 August 2015
Place of death
Stanford, California, U.S.
Citizenship
United Kingdom, United States
Occupation
Historian, poet
Education
  • Winchester College
  • Magdalen College
  • Oxford (MA, DLitt)
  • University of Grenoble

Facts from the source article.

What the cited sources add

The Guardian's 2003 profile notes that Conquest spent nearly 60 years exposing the crimes of communism while also being a poet and science fiction anthologist.[9] The same source reports that Conquest said Margaret Thatcher was the only politician with whom he was on cheek-kissing terms.[9] According to the Guardian obituary, Conquest was a former communist who became a speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher.[10] The obituary also states that Conquest's account of the 1930s terror was translated and published in a Soviet journal in 1989-90.[10]

The Hoover Institution biography notes that Conquest published a verse translation of Solzhenitsyn's epic Prussian Nights in 1977.[11]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Brown, "Scourge and poet", The Guardian, 15 February 2003; "Robert Conquest", Hoover Institution (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Vale Robert Conquest, Historian and Poet", Quadrant, 4 August 2015; ; Brown, "Scourge and poet", The Guardian, 15 February 2003 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Grimes, "Robert Conquest, Historian Who Documented Soviet Horrors, Dies at 98", The New York Times, 4 August 2015; Robert Conquest, Preface, The Great Terror: A Reassessment: 40th Anniversary Edition, Oxford University Press, USA, 2007. p. ix.; "Robert Conquest, historian – obituary", The Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2015 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Leigh, "Death of the department that never was", The Guardian, 27 January 1978; Timothy Garton Ash. "Orwell's List" (review), New York Review of Books, 23 September 2003.; Samuelson, "A pathbreaker. Robert Conquest and Soviet studies during the Cold War", Baltic Worlds; Brown, "Scourge and poet", The Guardian, 15 February 2003; "Robert Conquest, historian – obituary", The Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2015 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Samuelson, "A pathbreaker. Robert Conquest and Soviet studies during the Cold War", Baltic Worlds (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Grimes, "Robert Conquest, Historian Who Documented Soviet Horrors, Dies at 98", The New York Times, 4 August 2015; Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries by Christine L. Krueger p. 87; Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Vol. 2 By R. Reginald, Douglas Menville, Mary A. Burgess; Supplement to the Alumni Register (October 1920), "Pennsylvania; A Record of the University's Men in the Great War", University of Pennsylvania General Alumni S (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Cronin, "Robert Conquest, Seminal Historian of Soviet Misrule, Dies at 98", The Wall Street Journal, 4 August 2015 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Robert Conquest" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Grimes, "Robert Conquest, Historian Who Documented Soviet Horrors, Dies at 98", The New York Times, 4 August 2015; Cronin, "Robert Conquest, Seminal Historian of Soviet Misrule, Dies at 98", The Wall Street Journal, 4 August 2015 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Brown, "Scourge and poet", The Guardian, 15 February 2003. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
  10. Homberger, "Robert Conquest obituary", The Guardian, 5 August 2015. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
  11. "Robert Conquest", Hoover Institution. facts only, no text reused. hoover.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Robert Conquest (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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