Nina Tumarkin

Nina Tumarkin is the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Slavic Studies and Professor of History at Wellesley College, with affiliations to Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Her career spans decades of teaching, research, and public engagement in Russian and Soviet history.

• Department of History
• Russian Area Studies Program
• Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies

Her research focuses on historical memory in Russia, particularly how political elites and groups interpret the Soviet past. She has authored influential works on World War II commemoration, the Lenin cult, and the intersection of history and politics under Stalin and Putin.

• Politics of historical narratives
• World War II in Russian and global contexts
• Soviet cultural and political legacies
• Comparative memory studies

At Wellesley, Tumarkin has taught courses spanning medieval to post-Soviet Russian history, including seminars on World War II as Memory and Myth. She twice chaired the History Department and directed the Russian Area Studies Program for many years.

• HIST116: Vladimir Putin: Personage, President, Potentate
• HIST246: Vikings, Icons, Mongols, and Tsars
• HIST247: Splendor and Serfdom: Russia Under the Romanovs
• HIST248: The Soviet Union: A Tragic Colossus
• RAST322: Firebird! The Russian Arts Under Tsars and Commissars

She holds a B.A. from the University of Rochester, and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her scholarly work has engaged with Harvard's Davis Center for decades through seminars and collaborative research.

Notably, Tumarkin advised President Reagan on Soviet affairs before the 1985 Geneva Summit and influenced President Clinton's 1995 Moscow visit through her book The Living and the Dead. She actively participates in travel-study programs, lecturing on Russia, Japan, and World War II memory in Hiroshima and aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad.