Reference articles on history, science, culture and more
Encyclopedia

Steven Rosefielde

Professor of comparative economic systems (born 1942)

Steven R. Rosefielde (born 1942) is professor of comparative economic systems at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

01Red Holocaust

In Red Holocaust, Rosefielde's main point is that communism in general, although he focuses mostly on Stalinism, is less genocidal, and that is a key distinction from Nazism. According to German historian Jörg Hackmann, the term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally. Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes that usage of this term "allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime." Michael Shafir writes that the use of the term supports the "competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide", a theory whose worst version is Holocaust obfuscation. George Voicu states that Leon Volovici has "rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to 'usurp' and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews."

02Work, reviews and citations

In a 2001 study, Rosefielde calculated that there were 3.4 million premature deaths in Russia from 1990 to 1998, partly blaming on the shock therapy that came with the Washington Consensus. Rosefielde's work has been reviewed in peer-reviewed journals. Russia since 1980: Wrestling with Westernization was reviewed by David G. Rowley in History: Reviews of New Books. Red Holocaust was reviewed by Martin Kragh in Scandinavian Economic History Review. As of 2020, "Measuring Enterprise Efficiency in the Soviet Union: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis" has been cited 82 times.

03Selected works

Watch videos about Steven RosefieldeExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Steven Rosefielde, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.