I’ve come across debates on Reddit regarding the Soviet Gulag system, and I found a lot of people, mainly from this subreddit, recommended Oleg’s book on The History of the Gulag because of his access to archival information. In regards to his other books such as his biography of Stalin and other works, would people here regards him and his work as credible compared to other authors or historians? What are also some other reliable historians on the Soviet Union you would recommend? Thank you
Oleg Khlevniuk is a very well-respected researcher of the Soviet era. He’s one of the chief archival specialists at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), which along with the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) and Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) is the main repository for documents about Soviet politics and governance. All the declassified archival materials directly related to the Gulag system are stored there. While there are other authors I’d put on his level (Kozlov, Mironenko, Naumov) when it comes to Gulag-related archival material, they’re all on the same page when it comes to Gulag history and Khlevniuk is by far the most prolific when it comes to English publications.
For reliability, I think anyone that cites heavily from archives is a good starting place and will have a factual basis for what they’re writing even if you disagree with their conclusions. This site has a detailed guide of archives and their acronyms. The Bibliography/Notes section of a book will have what archives they cited from.
That being said, archives aren’t everything and there are plenty of authors with access to classified archives but weak analysis. O. Mozokhin, for example, has access to the FSB archive (TsAFSB) and Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (APRF) but doesn’t really engage with other researchers.
Re: authors, David Shearer, Lynn Viola, and James Harris are all good choices and have a lot of English publications to choose from.