Archie Brown

Archibald Haworth Brown, commonly known as Archie Brown (born 10 May 1938), is a British political scientist and historian. From 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St. Antony's Russian and East European Centre. He has written widely on Soviet and Russian politics, Communist politics more generally, the Cold War, and political leadership.

Brown was educated at Annan Academy and Dumfries Academy, before studying at both undergraduate and postgraduate level at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He taught at Glasgow University from 1964 to 1971, during which time he was a British Council exchange scholar at Moscow State University for a year between 1967 and 1968 [http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/russian/brown.shtml Archie Brown's St. Antony's College Biography] ] .

He has been Visiting Professor of Political Science at Yale University, the University of Connecticut and Columbia University. At the University of Texas, he was also a Visiting Professor, as well as a holder of the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Chair of Government. In addition, he spent the Fall semester of 1998 as the Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

At Oxford University, Brown was University Lecturer in Soviet Institutions from 1971 until 1989. He became a Professor of Politics, working in this position from 1989 to 2005. Meanwhile, he was a Sub-Warden of St Antony's College between 1995 and 1997 and Director of the Russian and East European Centre twice (from 1991 to 1994, and again from 1998 to 2001). He was Director of Graduate Studies in Politics for Oxford University between 2001 and 2003.

Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991, Brown was Chair of the Academy's Political Studies Section from 1999 to 2002. In 1999 he was chosen as a founding member of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences, before being elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2005 "for services to UK-Russian relations and to the study of political science and international affairs".

Brown has written and edited numerous books on Soviet and Communist politics, as well as articles on contemporary Russian and British politics. His most famous work is "The Gorbachev Factor", an analysis of Mikhail Gorbachev's role in the end of the Cold War, the reforms of Soviet Communism and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. He stresses that his work is not a biography and he treats Gorbachev's leadership and institutional power as decisive factors in the events of the late 1980s. The book examines the evolution of Gorbachev's 'New Thinking', his path to power and the subsequent economic, political and international reforms he initiated, before examining his attempts to deal with nationalism within the Soviet Union, the August Coup and the collapse of the USSR itselfBrown, A., "The Gorbachev Factor", 1997 (Oxford University Press)] . Drawing on extensive primary and secondary sources, "The Gorbachev Factor" has received widespread critical acclaim and recommendations by fellow academics; it has also won the W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize from the Political Studies Association of the U.K. for "the best political science book of its year", and shared the Alec Nove Prize from the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies for the "best book or article in any discipline on Russia, Communism or Postcommunism".

His most recent book is "Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective" which was published in the spring of 2007 by Oxford University Press.

=Bibliography=
* Brown, A., "Soviet Politics and Political Science", 1974 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., Kaser, M., "The Soviet Union Since the Fall of Khrushchev", 1975, 2nd ed., 1978 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., Gray, J., "Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States", 1977 (Macmillan)
* Rigby, T.H., Brown, A. and Reddaway, P. (eds), "Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR", 1980 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., Kaser, M., "Soviet Policy for the 1980s", 1982 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., Fennell, J., Kaser, M., Willetts, H.T. (eds), "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union", 1982 (Cambridge University Press)
* Brown, A., "Political Culture and Communist Studies" (ed), 1984; 2nd ed., 1994 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., "Political Leadership in the Soviet Union" (ed), 1989 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., "Biographical Dictionary of the Soviet Union" (ed), 1990 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
* Brown, A., (ed.), "New Thinking in Soviet Politics", 1992 (Macmillan)
* Brown, A., Kaser, M., Smith, G.S. (eds), "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Former Soviet Union", 1994 (Cambridge University Press)
* Brown, A., "The Gorbachev Factor", 1996 (Oxford University Press)
* Barry, B., Brown, A., Hayward, J. (eds), "The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century", 1999; paperback 2003 (Oxford University Press)
* Brown, A., (ed.), "Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader", 2001 (Oxford University Press)
* Brown, A., Shevtsova, L. (eds), "Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin: Political Leadership in Russia's Transition", 2001 (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
* Brown, A. (ed), "The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia", 2004 (Palgrave)
* Brown, A., "Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective", 2007 (Oxford University Press) See also Alex Pravda, 'Archie Brown' in Pravda, A. (ed.), "Leading Russia. Putin in Perspective: Essays in Honour of Archie Brown", 2005 (Oxford University Press)

=References=

[Category:British political scientists [Brown, Archie]