Moshe Lewin

Moshe Lewin was born in 1921 in Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), the son of ethnic Jewish parents who were later murdered in the Holocaust. Lewin lived in Poland for the first 20 years of his life, fleeing to the Soviet Union in June 1941 just ahead of the invading Nazi army.[1]

For the next two years, Lewin worked as a collective farm worker and as a blast furnace operator in a metallurgical factory.[1] In summer 1943, he enlisted in the Soviet army and was sent to officers' training school. He was promoted on the last day of the war.[1]

In 1946, Lewin returned to Poland before emigrating to France. A believer in Labor Zionism from his youth, in 1951 Lewin emigrated again, this time to Israel, where he worked for a time on a kibbutz and as a journalist. In his thirties, he took up academic studies,[1] receiving his Bachelor of Arts from Tel Aviv University, in 1961.[2]

That same year, Lewin was awarded a research scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied the collectivization of Soviet agriculture.[3] In 1964, he gained his Ph.D there.[2]

Lewin died on 14 August 2010 in Paris. His papers are housed at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.