Kurt S. Schultz

Assistants to the Managing Editor (from top to bottom): Max, Vesper, and IggyPaw Schultz

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 article manuscripts, and the occasional book review, from submission to publication.

Kurt received his B.A. from Eastern Illinois University in 1979, taught U.S. history and social studies (and coached freshmen girl’s volleyball!) in high school for 18 months, 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, and suffering a vitamin deficiency, at Leningrad State University, 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, a job which, even before COVID, allowed him to work at home, at the library, at the office, or on a park bench—and to do so at whatever time of the day or night he pleased. He’s been here ever since, even letting the journal drag him from his beloved Columbus, Ohio, to Lawrence, Kansas, in 2003 (a modest pay raise helped!).

When he is not bossing around authors and his assistant (or editors!), Kurt tries to relax by keeping his house and yard from looking like the Munsters live there, reading cheesy science fiction (nothing “scholarly” crosses his path when he is off the clock), and, 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.