Dr Gijs Kessler

Profile

Gijs Kessler (1969) studied history at the Free University of Amsterdam (MA, 1994) and the European University Institute, Florence (PhD, 2001). Specialist in the social history of Russia and the Soviet Union. Main research interests: labour history, migration, pre- and post-collectivisation peasantry, informal economy, family history. Gijs has worked on short assignments for the IISH in Moscow during 1994 and 1995, and returned to the Institute in January 2002 to lead the four-year research project 'Work, Income and the State in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2000', and, since 2005, the joint Dutch-Russian research project 'Social and Economic Agency and the Cultural Heritage of the Soviet Past'. He is a participant in the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations 1500-2000 and part of the organising committee of the Global Migration History Programme.
Next to his work for the IISH he is involved in the work of the Moscow-based Interdisciplinary Centre for Studies in History, Economy and Society and is a member of the editorial board of the Social History Yearbook. Gijs lives and works in Moscow.

Selected publications

- Donald Filtzer, Wendy Goldman, Gijs Kessler and Simon Pirani (eds), A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History, International and Comparative Social History 11 (Bern, Switzerland ; New York, 2008)
- Sergey Afontsev, Gijs Kessler, Andrei Markevich, Victoria Tyazhel'nikova and Timur Valetov, "The Urban Household in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2000. Patterns of Family Formation in a Turbulent Century", The History of the Family, 13(2) (2008), pp. 178-194.
- Gijs Kessler, "The 1932-1933 Crisis and Its Aftermath beyond the Epicenters of Famine: The Urals Region", in Halyna Hryn (ed), Hunger by design : the great Ukrainian famine and its Soviet context (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 117-129.
- Gijs Kessler, "Russische und ukrainische Saisonarbeitskräfte in den Getreideanbaugebieten Neurußlands und des nördlichen Kaukasus im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert", in Klaus J Bade et al. (eds), Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa: Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Paderborn, 2007), pp. 902-904.
- Gijs Kessler and Gennadii Egor'evich Kornilov (eds), Kolkhoznaia zhizn' na Urale, 1935-53 gg. Sbornik dokumentov, Dokumenty sovetskoi istorii (Moskva, 2006)
- Gijs Kessler, "Work and the household in the inter-war Soviet Union", Continuity and Change, 20(3) (2005), pp. 409-442
- Sergey A. Afontsev et al., Urban Households in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2000. Size, Structure and Composition, IISH Research Paper 44 (Amsterdam, 2005) (PDF file, 84pp., 908Kb)
- Gijs Kessler, 'The Passport System and State Control over Population Flows in the Soviet Union, 1932-1940', in: Cahiers du Monde Russe, Vol. 42, no. 2-4 (Avril-Décembre 2001), pp. 477-504
- Gijs Kessler, 'Krest'yanskaya migratsiya v Rossiiskoi Imperii i Sovetskom Soyuze. Otkhodnichestvo i vykhod iz sela', in Sotsial'naya istoriya. Ezhegodnik 1998/99 (ROSSPEN, Moscow, 1999), pp. 309-336
- Gijs Kessler, The 'Schools of Communism' under Neo-Liberal Reform. Russia's traditional trade union movement in the transition to a free market (IISG-Research Paper, Amsterdam, 1996) (PDF file, 40pp., 153Kb)