E. H. Carr (Edward Hallett Carr) Biography

British historian, born at Highgate, London, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1916 to 1936 he worked at the Foreign Office, where he rose to the rank of First Secretary. His wide diplomatic experience subsequently gained him a succession of academic posts. Throughout much of the Second World War he was assistant editor of The Times. During his years with the British Legation at Riga in the 1920s, Carr developed a deep interest in Russian culture and subsequently produced a series of biographical studies which include Dostoevsky (1931), Karl Marx (1934), and Michael Bakunin (1937). Among his earlier works as an authority on international affairs are The Twenty Years' Crisis: 1919–1939 (1939), Conditions of Peace (1942), and The Soviet Impact on the Western World (1946), which demonstrate his belief in the need for co-operation with the USSR. A History of Soviet Russia, Carr's magnum opus on the emergence of the Soviet state from 1917 and 1929, appeared in fourteen volumes between 1950 and 1978. A controversial view of history as a dynamic progression based on shifting structures of power informs all his works, which also include The New Society (1951), Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935 (1983), and the lectures and essays of What Is History? (1961) and From Napoleon to Stalin (1980).