44 Lenin Avenue

A researcher's journey to Siberia

CAS Conference, May 27-29

Filed under: Conferences & Presentations,Ignatii Dvernitskii,Methodology — Wilson Bell at 7:46 pm on Tuesday, May 9, 2017  Tagged , , , ,

I’m excited to be presenting, “The 1909 Murder of Ignatii Dvernitskii: A microhistorical approach,” as part of a panel on microhistory approaches to Russian and Soviet history at the annual convention of the Canadian Association of Slavists, part of the larger Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences that will take place at Ryerson University […]

Finding Compelling Stories

Filed under: Methodology,NKVD — Wilson Bell at 8:12 pm on Monday, February 27, 2017  Tagged , , , , , ,

As touched on in several earlier posts (e.g. here and here), the building at 44 Lenin Avenue, from its humble beginnings as a church-parish school to its role as local NKVD headquarters to its transformation into commercial and commemorative space itself provides a compelling story. This story runs parallel to many of the main trends […]

Storytelling and narrative devices

Filed under: Methodology — Wilson Bell at 11:38 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2017  Tagged , ,

Historians tell stories. That’s our job, or part of it. Unlike the novelist or filmmaker, however, historians are limited–at least in part–by available evidence on a given topic. We cannot, in other words, just make things up. This limitation aside, however, there remain almost countless ways that historians can tell stories, and almost countless methods […]