Charles A. Ruud

Professor Emeritus
PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1965

Research Interests

Russian History

Publications


Reynard Book CoverRUUD, Charles, A.  Fighting Words:  Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906 University of Toronto Press, 2009

From the Publisher:  Censorship took many forms in Imperial Russia. First published in 1982, Fighting Words focuses on the most common form: the governmental system that screened written works before or after publication to determine their acceptability. Charles A. Ruud shows that, despite this system, the nineteenth-century Russian Imperial government came to grant far more extensive legal publishing freedoms than most Westerners realize, adopting a more liberal attitude towards the press by permitting it a position recognized by law.

Fighting Words also reveals, however, that the government fell far short of implementing these reforms, thus contributing to the growth of opposition to the Tsarist regime in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. Now back in print with a new introduction by the author, Fighting Words is a classic work offering insight into the press, censorship, and the limits of printed expression in Imperial Russia.


Reynard Book CoverRUUD, Charles, A.  The Constant Diplomat:  Robert Ford in Moscow  (Montreal:McGill Press, 2009)

From the Publisher:  Robert A.D. Ford had a distinguished diplomatic career that included an unprecedented sixteen years as Canadian ambassador to the Soviet Union during some of the most turbulent and important years of the Cold War (1964-80). Relying heavily on first-person testimony, including several interviews with Ford himself, Charles Ruud takes the reader behind the official announcements, revealing Ford's thoughts and actions as he dealt with what was then seen as the great arch-enemy of Western democratic nations.





Fontanka 16: The Tsar's Political Police, co-authored with S.A. Stepanov, McGill-Queen's University Press, September 2002 (paperback edition).

Description

Fontanka 16 takes a fresh look at the feared Russian tsarist secret police, the Okhranka, during the period of the imperial regime leading up to the Revolution of 1917. It is a fascinating account of the development of a secret police organization that was deeply rooted in tsarist Russia but provided a model for Soviet police organizations.

Fontanka 16: Tsaaride Salapolitsei, co-authored with S.A. Stepanov, Tanapaev Press, Tallinn, 2005 (an Estonian translation).

Strach: Tajna policija carow(A Polish translation of Fontanka 16, co-authored with S.A. Stepanov), Warsaw, 2000.

Fontanka 16: Politicheskii ssysk pri tsariakh (Political Investigation Under the Tsars) with S.A. Stepaniv, Moscow, 1994. (A Russian trans. of Fontanka 16.)

Russkii predprinimatel: 'moskovskii izdatel' I.D. Sytin, 1851-1934 g.g.(A Russian translation of Russian Entrepreneur) tr. Andrei Leshchinsky, Moscow, 1993.

Russian Entrepreneur: Publisher I.D., Sytin of Moscow, 1851-1934, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990

Fighting Words: the Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906, University of Toronto Press, 1982. (Selected by Choiceas an Outstanding Academic Book for 1982 in European History).

Book Chapters

"Crosscurrents of French, Austrian, and Russian Security Policing, 1750-1900," in The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789-1991, eds. Catherine Evtuhov and Stepehn Kotkin, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003, pp.131-44.

"Russia," in The War for the Public Mind: Political Censorship in Nineteenth Century Europe, ed. Robert Justin Goldstein, Westport, Conn., 2000, pp. 239-272.

"The reports of Robert A.D. Ford, Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1964-1980," Diplomatic Documents and Their Users, eds. John Hilliker and Mary Halloran, Ottawa, 1995.

Articles in Refereed Journals

"Censorship of the Press - Russia," Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, 156, 2006, 54-63.

"The Poet F.I. Tiutchev and Russian Censorship," Literary Investigations of Donetsk National University(Ukraine), Donetsk, 2003, 112-24.

"An Appreciation: Robert A.D. Ford 1915-1998," National History, vol. 1, no. 4 (Summer 2000), pp. 299-302.

"Fin de Siecle Culture and the Shaping of Rachmaninoff," Studies in Music from The University of Western Ontario, no. 15, 1995.

"A.A. Lopukhin, Police Insubordination and the Rule of Law," Russian Historynos. 1-4.

"The Printing Press as an Agent of Change in Early Twentieth Century Russia," The Russian Review (October, 1981).

Articles in Unrefereed Journals

"The Parliamentary Tradition in Russia,"Canadian Parliamentary Review, April, 1992

Also from this web page:

Current Courses

  • HIS 3417E - Russia

Courses Taught

  • HIS 2409E - History of Russia
  • HIS 337E-001 - Russia
  • HIS 439E-001 - The Soviet Union