Kurt S. Schultz

My beautiful Maine Coon, Jayhawkcats Iaroslav HalfDark
(otherwise known as LittleHD)

Kurt has been Managing Editor of The Russian Review since June 1992, although for three years prior to that time he was an editorial assistant for the journal (and for two years an editorial assistant for Diplomatic History). Any author who has published in the Review since 1992 has worked with Kurt and needs little introduction, since it is his job to shepherd manuscripts through the refereeing, editing, typesetting, and publication process. 

Kurt received his B.A. from Eastern Illinois University in 1979, taught U.S. history and social studies in high school for one year, and then ran for dear life to graduate school at Miami University, Ohio, where he received his M.A. in 1982 (having specialized in U.S. Diplomatic History). After spending three months studying Russian at Leningrad State University (and coming down with beri-beri), Kurt returned to Miami University to start his Ph.D. work, but transferred to Ohio State University in the summer of 1986. He wrote a dissertation on Soviet-American economic relations during the First Five-Year Plan, a work that began as a study of U.S. governmental trade and investment policy toward the USSR but ended up as a study of Soviet efforts to "Americanize" their industry and workforce. Along the way he spent a year in Moscow on an IREX, published articles on the development of Soviet mobile warfare doctrine in the 1920s and the construction of the Nizhnii-Novgorod Automobile Factory, and finally defended his dissertation in the summer of 1992, whereupon he made a quick transition from editorial assistant of The Russian Review to its Managing Editor. After a desultory attempt to find a "real job," he decided he liked running the journal (who else gets to work at home, at the library, at the office, or on a park bench—and at whatever times he pleases?) and has been here ever since. While at Ohio State he volunteered, roughly once a year, to teach a survey course—usually one of the two U.S. history survey courses, although he would occasionally teach the Russian history survey (it's amazing how easy it is to cram all the unimportant stuff prior to 1917 into just one or two class sessions!). At the University of Kansas, they actually would pay him to teach these courses, but with the journal taking in so many submissions, and Kurt now responsible for typesetting as well, there just isn't the time for that, really, which is a shame because he really gets the urge every now and then to fail someone...

When he is not bossing around authors (or editors!), Kurt tries to relax by landscaping his yard (and watching stuff die in droves), reading cheesy science fiction (nothing “scholarly” crosses his path when he is off the clock), or, when the seasons are upon us, living and dying with the Buckeye football, basketball, and hockey teams. He also takes great pleasure in watching teams from That School Up North lose (something that happens a great deal these days <*snicker*>).