History Personnel
Teaching - Fall/Winter 2025-26
HIST 2705E - The Western Tradition in International Relations Theory and Practice
Supervision
Teaching and Advisory Membership
Oleksa Drachewych
- Assistant Professor
Telephone: 519-661-2111 ext. 88552
Email: odrachew@uwo.ca
Office: 2233
Office Hours: Thursdays 1:30 p.m - 3:30 p.m or by appointment
Research Interests
Professor Drachewych’s research interests focus on the history of Russian, Soviet and Modern European foreign policy, Russia’s War in Ukraine, genocide and atrocity, and international communism. He also serves as the network editor for H-Russia.
Professor Drachewych has Teaching/Advisory Membership in the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. Although he cannot serve as a primary supervisor for any graduate work, he can serve in other capacities.
Major Research Projects
1. Soviet Communism and Human and Civil Rights
This project surveys the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution and its ideals on the development of human and civil rights movements across the world in the twentieth century. The Bolshevik Revolution proved to be an influential moment for many people, owed to its perceived emphasis on peace, internationalism, egalitarianism, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism and racial equality. Despite promoting such values and drawing many people into the movement, the Soviet Union failed to practice these values internally, instead committing atrocities and violating human rights within its borders. As news of these horrors came to light, many communists remained influenced by the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution, while condemning the Soviet Union, and became prominent figures in civil rights, human rights, and colonial liberation movements in the twentieth century. This project outlines how the Soviet Union’s communist ideals influenced these progressive movements while, paradoxically, the Soviet regime failed to adhere to these values within its borders. This project is under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press.
2. Totalitarianism in the 20th Century: A Global History
This project will focus on writing a textbook on the subject of totalitarianism that focuses on the entirety of the twentieth century and takes a global approach, moving away from Eurocentric textbooks on the subject. This textbook will also question the concept of totalitarianism as an analytical paradigm, including discussion of its use in politics from the interwar period to the present. Each chapter will take a critical approach of a regime or government which has been defined as totalitarian. With this textbook, students will understand how the totalitarian paradigm developed in historical analysis, why certain regimes have been defined as totalitarian, and what strengths and limitations the approach has. Ultimately, the goal of the textbook, along with explaining how and why these regimes developed and operated, will be to encourage students to think critically about how to analyze certain regimes, while introducing undergraduates to foundational questions in historical research and historiography.
Selected Publications
Books
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Replaying the Second World War: Soviet Parallels and Inspirations for Russian Atrocities in the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2014-25. (Hannover: Ibidem Press, 2026). |
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Co-edited with Ian McKay. Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial, and Racial Questions. (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).
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The Communist International, Anti-Imperialism and Racial Equality in British Dominions. London: Routledge, 2018. (Paperback, 2020) |
Refereed Book Chapters
“Communism, Anticolonialism and Antiracism: The Comintern, Communists, and the Roots of a Global Revolutionary Campaign, 1919-1943,” Routledge History of Communism, edited by Melissa Feinberg and Lisa Kirschenbaum (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
“‘I guess I'll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine’: The historical roots of Canada’s position on the Russo-Ukrainian War,” Back to the North Atlantic: Canadian Foreign Policy and Europe since 1945, edited by Asa McKercher (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming), 316-340.
“The Bolsheviks’ Revolutionary International: The Idea and Establishment of the Communist International, 1914-1922,” Russian International Relations in War and Revolution, 1914-22, Book 2: Revolution and Civil War, edited by David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Oleg Budnitskii, Michael Hughes & David MacLaren McDonald (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2021), 317-340.
w/ Ian McKay, “Transnational Leftism? The Communist International, the National, Colonial and Racial Questions, and the Strengths and Limitations of the ‘Moscow Rules’ Paradigm,” Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions, edited by Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), 3-49.
“Race, the Comintern and Communist Parties in British Dominions, 1920-1943,” Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions, edited by Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), 247-269.
“Conclusion: Future Avenues for the Study of the Comintern and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions,” Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions, edited by Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), 407-411.
“Settler Colonialism and the Communist International,” Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, Second Edition, edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Selected Research and Review Articles
“Russia’s War against Ukraine: The Early Historiography of an Escalation” Russian Review 84, no. 4 (October 2025): 681-687.
“The Comintern and the National and Colonial Question: The Roots of Soviet Anti-Imperialism and Anti-Racism Reconsidered,” Russian History 50, no. 3-4 (May 2024): 218-241.
“Transnational Anti-Imperialism and the Left in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” American Historical Review 129, no. 1 (March 2024): 243-246.
“Broadening the Native Republic Thesis: De-siloing Comintern Histories,” Twentieth Century Communism 24 (2023): 110-131.
“Great Disappointment, Shifting Opportunities: A Glimpse into the Comintern, Western European Parties and their Colonial Work in the Third Period,” Twentieth Century Communism 18 (Spring 2020): 150-173.
w/ Daniel Edmonds & Evan Smith, "Editorial: Transnational communism and anti-colonialism," Twentieth Century Communism 18 (Spring 2020): 5-13.
“The Communist Transnational? Transnational Studies and the History of the Comintern,” History Compass 17, no. 2 (Feb. 2019).
Media
Professor Drachewych has written public facing pieces on Russia’s War in Ukraine in The Conversation, The Moscow Times, and Toronto Star. He has also offered public commentary for CBC News, CTV News, NBC News, NPR, Kyiv Independent and elsewhere.
