Jochen Hellbeck is a professor of history at Rutgers University and a specialist in twentieth-century Russia. His research centers on individual life stories and the shaping of the self in modern Europe, with a primary focus on the Soviet Union. He particularly seeks to understand the place of individuals in the context of cataclysmic events of the 20th century: the Russian Revolution, Stalin’s terror regime, and the Second World War. His work research has contributed to a more capacious and humane understanding of the Soviet Union, of World War II, and of how consciousness survived in societies that supposedly eradicated it.

Hellbeck runs a website, Facing Stalingrad: Portraits of German and Soviet Survivors, that features portraits and interviews taken with German and Russian veterans of the battle of Stalingrad.  In 2017, he helped launch the The Pulse Project, a participatory documentary initiative aimed at taking the pulse of the American nation in the 21st century. Volunteer participants from all walks of life and of all political persuasions reflect on their lives and share their thoughts about the world around them in a time of ongoing change. The project seeks to foster individual reflection and mutual recognition in the service of kindling a new dialogue across political divides.

Representative Publications:

Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015).
“The Diaries of Fritzes and the Letters of Gretchens”: Personal Writings from the German-Soviet War and Their Readers, Kritika 8:3 (Summer 2009).
With Hegel to Salvation: Bukharin’s Other Trial, Representations 107 (Summer 2009).
Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).