John Erickson

John Erickson, FRSE, FBA, FRSA (17 April 1929 – 10 February 2002) was a British military historian and expert on the Soviet Union. His two best-known books – The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin – dealt with the Soviet response to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. During the Cold War, he was respected for his knowledge of and personal contacts in the Soviet Union, and as head of the Centre for Defence Studies at Edinburgh University in the 1980s he played a major role in brokering a rapprochement between Western and Soviet diplomats and military through the Edinburgh Conversations.

Early life and education John Erickson was born on 17 April 1929 in South Shields (then in County Durham), England. His parents were Norwegians; who had served on the convoys supporting Murmansk and Arkhangelsk after the Soviet Union joined the Allies in World War II, and an ancestor was a Swede who served in the Russian Navy on the Aurora. He was educated at South Shields High School for Boys and after service in Army Intelligence with the King's Own Scottish Borderers, at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1946–49 he studied Slavonic languages as a postgraduate at St John's, and after being recalled to active duty for the Suez Crisis, He was the Lees-Knowles lecturer at Cambridge University in 1971–72 and was a consultant to the Ministry of Defence and the United Nations,

Edinburgh Conversations The United Kingdom formally suspended diplomatic contact with the Soviet Union after the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Seeking to maintain a forum of discussion in a neutral setting, The first Soviet delegation included the editor of Pravda and two army generals.

Personal life and death Erickson met his future wife, Ljubica Petrovic, when at St Antony's College, Oxford; she was reading English at the university. They married in 1957; since she was Yugoslavian, they first sought the permission of the Yugoslav cultural attaché. They had a son and a daughter. He died in Edinburgh on 10 February 2002, aged 72.

Publications The Soviet High Command 1918-1941: A Military-Political History 1918-1941. London: St Martin's Press (Macmillan), 1962 Panslavism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, for The Historical Association, London, 1964 The Military-Technical Revolution. New York: Praeger, 1966 (Revised and updated papers from a symposium held at the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich, October 1964) edited with J. N. Wolfe. The Armed Services and Society. Edinburgh University Press, 1970. (Proceedings of a University of Edinburgh seminar) The Road to Stalingrad. Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 1. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson / New York: Harper & Row, 1975. . Repr. London: Cassell, 2003 Soviet Military Power. London: Royal United Services Institute, 1976 edited with E. J. Feuchtwanger. Soviet Military Power and Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1979 The Road to Berlin. Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 2. 1983. Repr. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson / New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999 The Soviet Ground Forces: An Operational Assessment. Westview Printing, 1986 with Richard Simpkin. Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevski. Brasseys's, 1987 edited with David Dilks. Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies. Edinburgh University Press, 1994 (contributors include Dmitri Volkogonov, Harry Hinsley, , Klaus Reinhardt) with Ljubica Erickson. The Soviet Armed Forces 1918-1992: A Research Guide to Soviet Sources. 1996 The Russian Front. Four-part narrated televised series, Cromwell Films, 1998 "Barbarossa: Hitler Turns East" "The Road to Stalingrad" "Stalingrad to Kursk" "The Battles for Berlin" with Ljubica Erickson. The Eastern Front in Photographs: From Barbarossa to Stalingrad and Berlin. Carlton Publishing, 2001