Profile:
Jonathan Daly teaches Russian, European, and world history. His courses inquire mainly into the nature of Western Civilization–how it rose and shaped the modern world–and into the unequal struggle between the Russian state and society. His books, Autocracy under Siege (Northern Illinois University Press, 1998) and The Watchful State (Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), examine efforts by the Russian government before 1917 to isolate terrorists and political extremists but also to avoid indiscriminate persecution of opposition movements and figures. As a result of this policy, Russia’s civil society grew more vibrant, its press more diverse and abundant, and its cultural life richer and more dynamic than ever before–despite the attentions of what has often been branded a “police state.” The latter term applies appropriately, however, to the system of government established by the Bolsheviks, the subject of Daly’s current book project. Freedom Defeated will explore how the new regime systematically dismantled most of the institutions, associations, and laws–what we call civil society–that protected individuals, families, and collectives from domination by a powerful modern state. His other publications have investigated topics in Russian and European legal history, the pre-1917 Russian press, and the Bolshevik attack on the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922.