Editing Robert Conquest

{{Short description|British-American historian and poet (1917–2015)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=July 2012}}
{{Infobox writer
| name             = Robert Conquest
| image            = Robert Conquest (cropped).jpg
| caption          = Conquest in 1987
| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CMG|OBE|FBA|FRSL}}
| birth_name       = George Robert Acworth Conquest
| birth_date       = {{birth date|1917|07|15|df=y}}
| birth_place      = [[Great Malvern]], Worcestershire, England
| death_date       = {{death date and age|2015|08|03|1917|07|15|df=y}}
| death_place      = [[Stanford, California]], U.S.
| citizenship      = {{ubl|United Kingdom|United States}}
| occupation       = {{cslist|Historian|poet}}

| education        = {{ubl|[[Winchester College]]|[[Magdalen College, Oxford]] ([[Master of Arts (Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin)|MA]], [[DLitt]])|[[University of Grenoble]]}}
| notableworks     = {{ubl|''[[The Great Terror (book)|The Great Terror]]'' (1968)|''[[The Harvest of Sorrow]]'' (1986)}}
| awards           = [[#Awards and honors|See below]]
| spouse           = {{plainlist|
*{{marriage|Joan Watkins|1942|1948|end=div}}
*{{marriage|Tatiana Mihailova|1948|1962|end=div}}
*{{marriage|Caroleen MacFarlane|1964|1978|end=div}}
*{{marriage|Elizabeth Wingate|1979}}}}
| children         = 3
}}
{{Conservatism UK|Intellectuals}}
{{Conservatism US|intellectuals}}
'''George Robert Acworth Conquest''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CMG|OBE|FBA|FRSL}} (15 July 1917{{snd}}3 August 2015) was a British and American historian, poet, and novelist.<ref name=NYTobit/> He was briefly a member of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]]<ref>{{Cite web |title=Stanford historian Robert Conquest, expert on Soviet Union, dies at 98 |url=https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2015/08/robert-conquest-obit-080615 |website=Stanford University}}</ref> but later wrote several books against communism.

A long-time research fellow at [[Stanford University]]'s [[Hoover Institution]], Conquest was most notable for his work on the [[Soviet Union]]. His books included ''[[The Great Terror (book)|The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s]]'' (1968); ''[[The Harvest of Sorrow|The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine]]'' (1986); and ''[[Stalin: Breaker of Nations]]'' (1991). He was also the author of two novels and several collections of poetry.

==Early life and education==
Conquest was born in [[Great Malvern]], Worcestershire,<ref name="NYTobit"/> to an American father, Robert Folger Wescott Conquest, and an English mother, Rosamund Alys Acworth.<ref>Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries by Christine L. Krueger p. 87</ref><ref>''Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature'', Vol. 2 By R. Reginald, Douglas Menville, Mary A. Burgess</ref> His father served in an [[AFS Intercultural Programs|American Ambulance Field Service]] unit with the [[French Army in World War I]], and was awarded the [[Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)|Croix de Guerre, with Silver Star]] in 1916.<ref>Supplement to the ''Alumni Register'' (October 1920), "Pennsylvania; A Record of the University's Men in the Great War", University of Pennsylvania General Alumni Society, 1920, p. 40.</ref>

Conquest was educated at [[Winchester College]], where he won an [[Exhibition (scholarship)|exhibition]] to study [[Philosophy, Politics and Economics]] (PPE) at [[Magdalen College, Oxford]]. He took a gap year, spending time at the [[University of Grenoble]] and in Bulgaria, and returning to Oxford in 1937, where he joined the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] and the [[Carlton Club]].<ref name=Brown/> He was awarded an [[Master of Arts (Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin)|MA]] in PPE and a [[DLitt]] in history.<ref>{{cite web |title=Robert Conquest |url=https://www.hoover.org/profiles/robert-conquest |website=Hoover Institution |accessdate=11 February 2019}}</ref>

==Career==
===War years===
In Lisbon on an American passport at the outbreak of the [[World War II|Second World War]], Conquest returned to England.<ref name=Quadrant>{{cite web|title=Vale Robert Conquest, Historian and Poet|url=http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/08/vale-robert-conquest/|website=Quadrant|date=4 August 2015 |publisher=quadrant.org.au|accessdate=15 October 2015}}</ref> As the Communist Party of Great Britain denounced the war in 1939 as imperialist and capitalist, Conquest broke with it and was commissioned into the [[Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry]] on 20 April 1940, serving with the regiment until 1946.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=34837 |date=23 April 1940 |page=2459 |supp=y}}</ref><ref name="Brown"/>

In 1943 he was posted to the [[School of Slavonic and East European Studies]] (later part of [[University College London]]) to study Bulgarian.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> The following year he was posted to [[Bulgaria]] as a [[liaison officer]] to the Bulgarian forces fighting under Soviet command, attached to the Third Ukrainian Front, then to the [[Allied Control Commission]]. At the end of the war, he joined the [[Foreign Office]], returning to the British Legation in [[Sofia]] where he remained as the press officer.<ref name=NYTobit/> In 1948 he left Bulgaria when he was recalled to London under a minor diplomatic cloud after he had helped smuggle two Bulgarians out of the country.<ref name=Telegraphobit/>

===Information Research Department===
In 1948 Conquest joined the Foreign Office's [[Information Research Department]] (IRD), a "propaganda counter-offensive" unit created by the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] [[Clement Attlee|Attlee]] government<ref name="Leigh"/> in order to "collect and summarize reliable information about Soviet and communist misdoings, to disseminate it to democratic journalists, politicians, and trade unionists, and to support, financially and otherwise, anticommunist publications."<ref>Timothy Garton Ash. "Orwell's List" (review), ''New York Review of Books'', 23 September 2003.</ref> The IRD was also engaged in manipulating public opinion.<ref name="Baltic Worlds 2">{{cite web|last1=Samuelson|first1=Lennart|title=A pathbreaker. Robert Conquest and Soviet studies during the Cold War|url=http://balticworlds.com/a-pathbreaker-robert-conquest-and-soviet-studies-during-the-cold-war/|website=Baltic Worlds|accessdate=22 September 2015}}</ref> Conquest was remembered there as a "brilliant, arrogant" figure who had 10 people reporting to him.<ref name="Brown"/> He continued to work at the Foreign Office until 1956, becoming increasingly involved in the intellectual counter-offensive against communism.<ref name=Telegraphobit/>

In 1949 Conquest's assistant, Celia Kirwan (later Celia Goodman), approached [[George Orwell]] for information to help identify Soviet sympathisers. [[Orwell's list]], discovered after her death in 2002, included ''[[The Guardian|Guardian]]'' and ''[[The Observer|Observer]]'' journalists, as well as [[E. H. Carr]] and [[Charlie Chaplin]].<ref name="Homberger">{{cite news |last=Homberger |first=Eric |date=5 August 2015 |title=Robert Conquest obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/05/robert-conquest |newspaper=The Guardian |accessdate=11 September 2015}}</ref> Conquest, like Orwell, fell for the beautiful Celia Kirwan, who inspired him to write several poems.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> One of his foreign office colleagues was Alan Maclean, brother of [[Donald Maclean (spy)|Donald Maclean]], one of the [[Kim Philby|Philby]] spy ring, who fled to Russia with [[Guy Burgess]] in 1951. When his brother defected, Alan resigned, then went to Macmillan and published a book of Conquest's poems.<ref name="Brown"/> At the Foreign Office, Conquest wrote several papers that sowed the seeds for his later work. One, on the Soviet means of obtaining confessions, was elaborated on in ''The Great Terror''. Other papers were "Peaceful Co-existence in Soviet Propaganda and Theory", and "United Fronts&nbsp;– a Communist Tactic".<ref name=Telegraphobit/> In 1950 Conquest served briefly as First Secretary in the British Delegation to the United Nations.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

===Writing===
In 1956 Conquest left the Foreign Office and became a freelance writer and historian.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> After he left, he says, the Information Research Department (IRD) suggested to him that he could combine some of the data he had gathered from Soviet publications into a book.<ref name="Leigh">{{cite news |last=Leigh |first=David |author-link=David Leigh (journalist) |date=27 January 1978 |title=Death of the department that never was |url=http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/e/fo_deceit_unit_graun_27jan1978.html |newspaper=The Guardian |accessdate=11 September 2015}}</ref> During the 1960s he edited eight volumes of work produced by the IRD, published in London by [[the Bodley Head]] as the Soviet Studies Series.<ref name="Leigh"/> Many of his Foreign Office works were published this way.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> In the United States, the material was republished as The Contemporary Soviet Union Series by [[Greenwood Publishing Group|Frederick Praeger]], who had previously published several books on communism at the request of the CIA,<ref name="Leigh"/> in addition to works by [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], [[Milovan Đilas]], [[Howard Fast]], and [[Charles Patrick Fitzgerald]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Lyons |first=Richard D. |date=5 June 1994 |title=Frederick A. Praeger Dies at 78; Published Books on Communism |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/05/obituaries/frederick-a-praeger-dies-at-78-published-books-on-communism.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=27 July 2018}}</ref>

In 1962–1963 Conquest was literary editor of ''[[The Spectator]]'', but he resigned when he found the job interfering with his historical writing. His first books on the Soviet Union were ''Common Sense About Russia'' (1960), ''The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities'' (1960) and ''Power and Policy in the USSR'' (1961). His other early works on the Soviet Union included ''Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair'' (1961) and ''Russia After Khrushchev'' (1965).<ref name=Telegraphobit/>

==Historical works==
===''The Great Terror'' (1968)===
{{Main|The Great Terror (book)}}
In 1968 Conquest published what became his best-known work, ''The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties'', the first comprehensive research of the [[Great Purge]], which took place in the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938. Many reviewers at the time were not impressed by his way of writing about the Great Terror, which was in the tradition of "great men who make history".<ref name="Baltic Worlds 2" /> The book was based mainly on information which had been made public, either officially or by individuals, during the so-called "[[Khrushchev Thaw]]" in the period 1956–64. It also drew on accounts by Russian and Ukrainian [[émigré]]s and [[exile]]s dating back to the 1930s, and on an analysis of official Soviet documents such as the [[Soviet census]].<ref name=GT1>{{cite book|last1=Conquest|first1=Robert|title=The Great Terror|date=1968|edition=1st}}</ref>

The most important aspect of the book was that it widened the understanding of the purges beyond the previous narrow focus on the "[[Moscow trials]]" of disgraced [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] leaders such as [[Nikolai Bukharin]] and [[Grigory Zinoviev]], who were executed shortly thereafter. The question of why these leaders had pleaded guilty and confessed to various crimes at the trials had become a topic of discussion for a number of [[Western culture|western]] writers, and helped inspire anti-Communist tracts such as [[George Orwell]]'s ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' and [[Arthur Koestler]]'s ''[[Darkness at Noon]]''.<ref name="WSJ 4"/>

Conquest argued that the trials and executions of these former Communist leaders were a minor detail of the purges. By his estimates, Stalinist purges had led to the deaths of some 20 million people. He later stated that the  total number of deaths could "hardly be lower than some thirteen to fifteen million."<ref>Robert Conquest, Preface, ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment: 40th Anniversary Edition'', Oxford University Press, USA, 2007. p. xviii</ref>

Conquest sharply criticized Western intellectuals such as [[Beatrice Webb|Beatrice]] and [[Sidney Webb]], [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], [[Walter Duranty]], [[Bernard Pares|Sir Bernard Pares]], [[Harold Laski]], [[D. N. Pritt]], [[Theodore Dreiser]], [[Bertolt Brecht]], [[Owen Lattimore]], and [[Romain Rolland]], as well as American ambassador [[Joseph E. Davies|Joseph Davies]], accusing them of being dupes of Stalin and apologists of his regime. Conquest cites various comments made by them where, he argues, they were denying, excusing, or justifying various aspects of the purges.<ref>Robert Conquest, ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment'', Oxford University Press (1990) {{ISBN|0-19-507132-8}}, pp. 466–475.</ref>

After the opening up of the [[Soviet archives]], detailed information was released that Conquest argued supported his conclusions. When Conquest's publisher asked him to expand and revise ''The Great Terror'', Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled ''I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.'' In fact, the mock title was jokingly proposed by Conquest's old friend, Sir [[Kingsley Amis]]. The new version was published in 1990 as ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment''; {{ISBN|0-19-507132-8}}.<ref>Conquest, Robert.
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/apr/12/kingsley-amis-and-the-great-terror "Letter to the Editors"], ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', 12 April 2007.</ref> The American historian [[J. Arch Getty]] disagreed, writing in 1993 that the archives did not support Conquest's casualty figures.<ref name="getty">{{cite journal | title=Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence | journal=[[American Historical Review]] |date=October 1993  | volume=98 | issue=4 | page=1043 |author1=[[J. Arch Getty]] |author2=Gábor T. Rittersporn |author3=[[Viktor N. Zemskov]] |url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828071544/http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf |archive-date=2008-08-28 |url-status=live|doi=10.2307/2166597 |jstor=2166597}}</ref> In 1995, investigative journalist Paul Lashmar suggested that the reputation of prominent academics such as Robert Conquest was built upon work derived from material provided by the [[Information Research Department|IRD]].<ref name="defty">{{cite book |last=Defty |first=Andrew |date=2 Dec 2013 |title=Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945–53: The Information Research Department |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dQ9EAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA3 |location= |publisher=Routledge |page=3 |isbn=978-1317791690}}</ref>
According to [[Denis Healey]] ''The Great Terror'' was an important influence, "but one which confirmed people in their views rather than converted them".<ref name="Brown"/>

Many aspects of his book continue [[The Great Terror (book)#Reception, impact, and debates|to be disputed]] by [[sovietologist]] historians and researchers on Russian and Soviet history, such as [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]], who insists that Conquest's victim totals for Stalinist repressions are too high, even in his reassessments.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal|author=Wheatcroft, Stephen G. |title=Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word|journal= [[Europe-Asia Studies]]|volume= 51|issue= 2 |year=1999|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070704065523/http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf |archive-date=2007-07-04 |url-status=live|pages=340–342|doi=10.1080/09668139999056}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{cite journal|author=Wheatcroft, S. G. |title=The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest|journal= Europe-Asia Studies|volume=52 |issue=6|pages=1143–1159|year=2000|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Comments_KEP_CNQ.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828071704/http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Comments_KEP_CNQ.pdf |archive-date=2008-08-28 |url-status=live|doi=10.1080/09668130050143860|pmid=19326595|s2cid=205667754}}</ref> In 2000, [[Michael Ignatieff]], whose family had emigrated from Russia as a result of the [[Bolshevik Revolution]], wrote "One of the few unalloyed pleasures of old age is living long enough to see yourself vindicated. Robert Conquest is currently enjoying this pleasure."<ref name="Ignatieff">{{cite journal|last1=Ignatieff|first1=Michael|title=The Man Who Was Right|journal=New York Review of Books|date=23 March 2000|volume=47|issue=5|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2000/mar/23/the-man-who-was-right/|accessdate=7 October 2015}}</ref> Conservative historian [[Paul Johnson (writer)|Paul Johnson]], one of [[Margaret Thatcher|Thatcher]]'s closest advisers, described Conquest as "our greatest living historian". And, in the phrase of [[Timothy Garton Ash]], he was [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|Solzhenitsyn]] before Solzhenitsyn.<ref name="Brown"/>

In 1996 Marxist historian [[Eric Hobsbawm]], who had been previously attacked by Conquest for his book ''[[Age of Extremes]]'',<ref>{{cite news |last=Moyihan |first=Michael C. |author-link=Michael C. Moynihan |date=20 August 2011 |title=How a True Believer Keeps the Faith |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512722707621288 |newspaper=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |accessdate=9 January 2012}}</ref> praised Conquest's ''The Great Terror'' "as a remarkable pioneer effort to assess the Stalin Terror". However he expressed the view that this work and others were now to be considered obsolete "simply because the archival sources are now available". As a result, he wrote, there was no need for "fragmentary sources" and "guesswork". "[W]hen better or more complete data are available, they must take the place of poor and incomplete ones."<ref name="Hobsbawm">{{cite book |last=Hobsbawm  |first=Eric |date=2011 |title=On History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WVuIyMVegT8C |location= |publisher=Hachette UK |chapter= 19 |isbn=978-1780220512}}</ref> In 2002 Conquest replied to his [[Historical revisionism|revisionist critics]]: ''"They're still talking absolute balls. In the academy, there remains a feeling of, "Don't let's be too rude to Stalin. He was a bad guy, yes, but the Americans were bad guys too, and so was the British Empire."''<ref name="The National Review">{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/article/215908/robert-conquest-an-appreciation|title=Robert Conquest an appreciation|date=5 August 2015 |publisher=nationalreview.com|accessdate=18 September 2015}}</ref>

===''The Harvest of Sorrow'' (1986)===
{{Main|The Harvest of Sorrow}}
In 1986 Conquest published ''[[The Harvest of Sorrow|The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine]]'', dealing with the collectivization of agriculture in [[Ukraine]] and elsewhere in the USSR, under Stalin's direction in 1929–31, and the resulting famine, in which millions of peasants died due to [[starvation]], [[deportation]] to [[labor camp]]s, and execution. In this book, Conquest supported the view that the famine was a planned act of genocide.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> According to historians [[Stephen Wheatcroft]] and [[R. W. Davies]], "Conquest holds that Stalin wanted the famine... and that the Ukrainian famine was deliberately inflicted for its own sake." Nevertheless, he wrote to them in a letter in 2003 that "Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine? No. What I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put 'Soviet interest' other than feeding the starving first thus consciously abetting it."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|date=June 2006|title=Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33: A Reply to Ellman|url=https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS2319/h16/pensumliste/stalin-and-the-soviet-famine-of-1932-33_-a-reply-to-ellman.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170818094844/http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS2319/h16/pensumliste/stalin-and-the-soviet-famine-of-1932-33_-a-reply-to-ellman.pdf |archive-date=2017-08-18 |url-status=live|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=58|issue=4|pages=625–633}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1= Wheatcroft |first1=Stephen G.|last2=Davies |first2= R. W. |author-link= |date=2016 |title= The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4s1lCwAAQBAJ&dq=the%20years%20of%20hunger&pg=PA441 |location= |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |page=441 |isbn=9780230273979}}</ref>

===''Stalin and the Kirov Murder'' (1989)===
For the [[Trotskyists]], Kirov's murder was the Stalinist equivalent of the [[Reichstag fire]], deliberately started by the Nazis to justify the arrest of German Communists. The Trotskyist-[[Menshevik]] view became the dominant one among western historians, popularised in Robert Conquest's influential books.<ref name=Priestland>{{cite journal|last1=Priestland|first1=David|title=The Kirov Murder and Soviet History|journal=History Today|date=May 2011|volume=61|issue=5|url=http://www.historytoday.com/blog/books-blog/david-priestland/kirov-murder-and-soviet-history|accessdate=27 September 2015}}</ref>

In ''[[The Great Terror]]'', Conquest already undermined the official Soviet story of conspiracy and treason. Conquest placed the murder in 1934 of the Leningrad party boss, [[Sergei Kirov]], one of Stalin's inner circle, as the key to the mechanism of terror.{{fact|date=May 2025}}

He returned to this in ''Stalin and the Kirov Murder'' (1989), where he argued that Stalin not only sanctioned Kirov's assassination, but used it as a justification for the terror that culminated in 1937&ndash;38, though no evidence has been found to confirm Stalin's role in the murder.<ref name="Homberger"/><ref name="Figes">''The Whisperers'', Orlando Figes, Allen Lane 2007, p. 236n</ref><ref name="Getty on Kirov">Getty, J. Arch, ''Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–38,'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 207.</ref>

==Poetry and literature==
===Poems===
In addition to his scholarly work, Conquest was a well-regarded poet<ref>David Yezzi, ''Yale Review'', Volume 98, Issue 2 (April 2010), p. 183 ff.<!-- ISSN needed --></ref> whose poems have been published in various periodicals from 1937. In 1945 he was awarded the PEN Brazil Prize for his war poem "For the Death of a Poet"&nbsp;– about an army friend, the poet Drummond Allison, killed in Italy – and, in 1951, he received a Festival of Britain verse prize.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://waywiser-press.com/conquest.html|title=Robert Conquest, ''Penultimata'': Note on Robert Conquest|publisher=waywiser-press.com|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140115171724/http://waywiser-press.com/conquest.html|archivedate=15 January 2014}}</ref> During his lifetime, he had seven volumes of poetry<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/conquest-historian-poet-081610.html|title=Stanford legend Robert Conquest: new books at 93 for the historian and poet|work=Stanford Report|date=16 August 2010|accessdate=4 August 2015|first=Cynthia|last=Haven}}</ref> and one of literary criticism<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/speakers-and-events/biography/robert-conquest|title=Robert Conquest|publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|accessdate=4 August 2015}}</ref> published.

Conquest was a major figure in a prominent British literary circle known as [[The Movement (literature)|"The Movement"]] which also included [[Philip Larkin]] and [[Kingsley Amis]]. Movement poets, many of whom bristled at being so labeled, rejected the experiments of earlier practitioners such as [[Ezra Pound]].<ref name="WSJ 4" />

He edited, in 1956 and 1962, the influential ''New Lines'' anthologies, introducing works by them, as well as [[Thom Gunn]], [[Dennis Enright]], and others, to a wider public.<ref>Zachary Leader, ed., ''The Movement Reconsidered'', Oxford University Press, 2009.</ref> He spent 1959–60 as visiting poet at the [[University of Buffalo]]. Several of his poems were published in ''The New Oxford Book of Light Verse'' (1978; compiled by Amis), under the pseudonyms "Stuart Howard-Jones", "Victor Gray" and "Ted Pauker".{{citation needed|reason=old source not suitable for factual claims|date=March 2020}}

It emerged from the pages of poet [[Philip Larkin]]'s [[Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985|published letters]] that Conquest and Larkin shared an enthusiasm for pornography in the 1950s.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> When Larkin was in Hull, Conquest sent him judicious selections of the latest pornography, and, when he came down to London, Conquest took him on shopping trips to the Soho porn shops.<ref name="Homberger"/> On one occasion Conquest, in 1957, wrote a letter to Larkin purporting to come from the Vice Squad which had found the poet's name on a pornographic publisher's list. Larkin panicked and went to see his solicitor, convinced that he was going to lose his job as librarian at Hull University, before Conquest owned up.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> The true story of the joke became in 2008, ''[[Mr Larkin's Awkward Day]]'', a comedy radio play by Chris Harrald.<ref>{{cite web |author=BBC Radio 4 Publicity |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/radio/wk18/tue.shtml |title=Mr Larkin's Awkward Day |publisher=[[BBC Radio 4]] | date=29 April 2008}}</ref>

Soon after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] met with Conquest, asking him to translate a 'little' poem of his into English verse. This was "[[Prussian Nights]]" – nearly two thousand lines in ballad metre – published in 1977.<ref>Robert Conquest, 'Solzhenitsyn, A Genius with a Blindspot', ''Sunday Times'', 10 August 2008; p. A15</ref>

A new ''Collected Poems'', edited by Elizabeth Conquest, was published in March 2020 by the Waywiser Press.<ref>[https://waywiser-press.com/product/collected-poems/ ''Collected Poems'', Robert Conquest]</ref>

===Novels===
Conquest had been a member of the [[British Interplanetary Society]] since the 1940s, and shared Amis's taste for science fiction. Starting from 1961, the two writers jointly edited ''Spectrum'', five anthologies of new sci-fi writing.<ref name="Homberger"/> Conquest also proposed to Amis a collaboration based on a draft comic novel that Conquest had completed. This was revised by Amis, then it appeared under both their names as ''The Egyptologists'' (1965).<ref name="Homberger"/> The novel is about a secret Egyptological London society that is really a husbands' organization serving as an alibi for philanderers.<ref name="WSJ 4"/><ref name="LA Times">{{cite news |last=Hillier |first=Bevis |author-link=Bevis Hillier |date=19 November 1986 |title=Harvest' of Soviet Terrorism Reaped by Historian Conquest |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-11-19-vw-4241-story.html |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |access-date=4 October 2015}}</ref> A reviewer in ''[[The New York Times]]'' felt that their "elaborate little jokes leave an unpleasant taste".<ref name="Homberger"/>

Later a film version of the novel was cancelled when its star, [[Peter Sellers]], was called away to Hollywood.<ref name="The National Review 2">{{cite web|last1=O'Sullivan|first1=John|title=What to Make of the Guardian's Shameful Robert Conquest Obituary?|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422574/robert-conquest-guardian-obituary|website=National Review|date=14 August 2015 |publisher=nationalreview.com|accessdate=27 September 2015}}</ref> Conquest published a science-fiction novel, ''A World of Difference'' (1955).<ref name="NYTobit"/>

==Political works==
===''What to Do When the Russians Come'' (1984)===
In 1984, Robert Conquest wrote, with [[Jon Manchip White]], the fictional book ''What to Do When the Russians Come: a Survivor's Guide'' which, however, was intended to be a real survival manual in case of Soviet invasion. This book, as many other works of the mid-1980s in different media, like Sir [[John Hackett (British Army officer)|John Hackett]]'s ''[[The Third World War: The Untold Story|The Third World War]]'', the movie ''[[Red Dawn]]'', and the [[Milton Bradley]] game ''[[Fortress America (board game)|Fortress America]]'', starts from the premise that a Soviet ground-invasion of the United States could be imminent and that the Soviet Union was about to engulf the world.

<blockquote>It is widely accepted that the United States now faces a real possibility of succumbing to the power of an alien regime unless the right policies are pursued. [This book's aim] is, first, to show the American citizen clearly and factually what the results of this possible Soviet domination could be and how it would affect him or her personally; and second, to give some serious advice on how to survive."<ref name="russians come 1">{{cite book|last1=Conquest|first1=Robert|last2=Manchip White|first2=Jon|title=What to Do When the Russians Come: a Survivor's Guide|date=1984|publisher=Stein and Day|isbn=0812829859|page=[https://archive.org/details/whattodowhenruss00conq/page/n164 7]|url=https://archive.org/details/whattodowhenruss00conq|url-access=registration|accessdate=24 September 2015}}</ref></blockquote>

Conquest supported the Reagan defense buildup and asked for an increase of expenses on US defense budget, claiming that in the nuclear field [[NATO]] was only possibly matching USSR military power:

<blockquote>We live in dangerous times. Such miscalculations are very possible. But they are not inevitable. The American people and their representatives have it in their power to prevent their country from undergoing the ordeal we have described. A democratic government, with all its distractions and disadvantages, ... It is not infallible, it is slow to learn, and it is willing to grasp at comfortable illusions; but it may yet act decisively"<ref name="russians come 2">{{cite book|last1=Conquest|first1=Robert|last2=Manchip White|first2=Jon|title=What to Do When the Russians Come: a Survivor's Guide|date=1984|publisher=Stein and Day|isbn=0812829859|page=[https://archive.org/details/whattodowhenruss00conq/page/175 175]|url=https://archive.org/details/whattodowhenruss00conq|url-access=registration|accessdate=24 September 2015}}</ref>

"But why should we fear that such an ordeal may face us? The economic potential of the West in gross national product is far greater than that of the Soviet Union....In fact, the Soviet Union is economically far behind the United States. American technology is always a generation ahead of theirs. They have to turn to the United States for wheat. The Soviet economy is at a dead end. The Communist system has failed to win support in any of the countries of Eastern Europe. The Soviet idea has no attractions. On any calculation—of economic power or social advance or intellectual progress there could be no question of the Russians imposing their will. But in terms of actual military power, the West's advantage does not seem to have been made use of. It is at least matched, and many would say overmatched, in the nuclear field; the Western forces in Europe have less than half the striking power of their opponents. It is no good our being more advanced than they are if this is not translated into power—both military power and political willpower."<ref name="russians come 3">{{cite book|last1=Conquest|first1=Robert|last2=Manchip White|first2=Jon|title=What to Do When the Russians Come: a Survivor's Guide|date=1984|publisher=Stein and Day|isbn=0812829859|pages=[https://archive.org/details/whattodowhenruss00conq/page/176 176]–177|url=https://archive.org/details/whattodowhenruss00conq|url-access=registration|accessdate=24 September 2015}}</ref></blockquote>

In 1986 Conquest affirmed that "a science-fiction attitude is a great help in understanding the Soviet Union. It isn't so much whether they're good or bad, exactly; they're not bad or good as we'd be bad or good. It's far better to look at them as Martians than as people like us."<ref name="LA Times" />

===''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (1999)===
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?153487-1/reflections-ravaged-century ''Booknotes'' interview with Conquest on ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'', 19 December 1999], [[C-SPAN]]| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?154811-1/reflections-ravaged-century Presentation by Conquest of ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'', 19 January 2000], [[C-SPAN]]}} 
''[https://archive.org/details/ReflectionsOnARavagedCentury Reflections on a Ravaged Century]'' is a book devoted to the psychological roots of fanaticism, in which Conquest argues that Communism and Nazism were equal and more twins than opposites.<ref name="TLS Hitchens">{{cite news|last1=Hitchens|first1=Christopher|title=Against sinister perfectionism|agency=The Times Literary Supplement|url=http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/against-sinister-perfectionism/|date=26 November 1999|accessdate=25 May 2016}}</ref>

There is much more in this book about communism than Nazism, partly because of Conquest's greater expertise on communism, and partly because comparatively few Western intellectuals became Nazis. He focuses mainly on attacks on intellectuals in the West who became communists because they felt or believed that this was "anti-fascism" or "anti-Nazism".<ref name="TLS Hitchens"/>

===Laws of politics===
{{anchor|Three Laws of Politics}}
{{anchor|Two Laws of Politics}}
Conquest posited two laws of politics, apparently not referenced in any of his books but as observations he made in conversations:<ref name="Vogel"/>
# Generally speaking, everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.
# Every organisation appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents.

Conquest's first and second law are attested by at least two sources.<ref name="Vogel">{{cite web|last=Vogel|first=Martin|date=17 December 2018|url=https://vogelwakefield.com/2018/12/tracking-down-conquests-law-on-organisations/|title=Tracking down Conquest's law on organisations|website=Vogel Wakefield|accessdate=13 October 2021|archive-date=11 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211011090917/https://vogelwakefield.com/2018/12/tracking-down-conquests-law-on-organisations/|url-status=live}}</ref> On 14 February 2003, [[Andrew Brown (writer)|Andrew Brown]] wrote of Conquest's campaign against the expansion of university education that "[f]rom this period dates 'Conquest's Law', which states that 'Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands'. This was later supplemented with the balancing rule that every organisation behaves as if it is run by secret agents of its opponents."<ref name="Brown"/> In his 1991 ''Memoirs'', [[Kingsley Amis]] wrote of Conquest that "he was to point out that, while very 'progressive' on the subject of colonialism and other matters I was ignorant of, I was a sound reactionary about education, of which I had some understanding and experience. From my own and others' example he formulated his famous First Law, which runs, 'Generally speaking, everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.' (The Second Law, more recent, says, 'Every organisation appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents.')"<ref>{{cite book|last=Amis|first=Kingsley|year=2012|orig-year=1991|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_neTtBlqCU4C|title=Memoirs|edition=E-book|publisher=Random House|page=146|isbn=9781446414668|accessdate=13 October 2021|via=Google Books}}</ref>

On 25 June 2003, [[John Derbyshire]] wrote in the ''[[National Review Online]]''{{'}}s blog ''The Corner'' that "[a]s best I can remember", Conquest conjectured three laws of politics:<ref>{{cite web|last=Derbyshire|first=John|date=25 June 2003|url=https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/conquests-laws-john-derbyshire/|title=Conquest's Laws|website=National Review|accessdate=13 October 2021|archive-date=11 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211011090915/https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/conquests-laws-john-derbyshire/|url-status=live}}</ref>
# Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
# Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
# The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

Derbyshire commented: "Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the [[Church of England]] and [[Amnesty International]] as examples. Of the third, he noted that a bureaucracy sometimes actually ''IS'' controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies – e.g. the postwar [[British secret service]]." For these statements, Conquest would become well known among certain thinkers, especially online [[conservative]]s; however, Derbyshire cited no source for them and implied his memory was not certain on the matter. Indeed, the second law given here is [[O'Sullivan's first law]], which was stated by [[John O'Sullivan (columnist)|John O'Sullivan]] in his article "O'Sullivan's First Law" in the 27 October 1989 print issue of the ''[[National Review]]'', in which he also references Derbyshire's Conquest's third law as Conquest's second law:
{{blockquote|text=That is explained by O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the [[ACLU]], the [[Ford Foundation]], and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels's [[Iron Law of Oligarchy]] takes over—and the rest follows.

Is there any law which enables us to predict the behavior of right-wing organizations? As it happens, there is: Conquest's Second Law (formulated by the Sovietologist Robert Conquest):

The behavior of an organization can best be predicted by assuming it to be controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. Examples: virtually any conservative party anywhere, the [[Ronald Lauder]] for Mayor campaign, and the British secret service. That last example is, however, flawed, since the British secret service actually was controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies in the form of Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, et al. In which case, Conquest's Law should have operated to make M1-6 [sic] a crack anti-Soviet intelligence service of James Bond proportions. But these are deep waters.<ref>{{cite web|last=O'Sullivan|first=John|date=27 October 1989|url=http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-jos062603.asp|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100715191034/http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-jos062603.asp|archivedate=15 July 2010|url-status=dead|title=Conquest's Laws|website=National Review|accessdate=13 October 2021}}</ref>}}

==Personal life==
Conquest was married four times, first in 1942 to Joan Watkins, with whom he had two sons. They divorced in 1948.<ref name=Telegraphobit>{{cite news |title=Robert Conquest, historian – obituary |url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11782719/Robert-Conquest-historian-obituary.html |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=4 August 2015 |archiveurl=https://archive.today/20150804203217/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11782719/Robert-Conquest-historian-obituary.html |archivedate=4 August 2015}}</ref> There followed a marriage to Tatiana Mihailova (1948–1962),<ref name=Telegraphobit/> whom he had helped escape from Bulgaria.<ref name=NYTobit/> She was diagnosed with [[schizophrenia]] in 1951. In 1962 he married Caroleen MacFarlane; they divorced in 1978.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> That year he began dating Elizabeth Neece Wingate, a lecturer in English and the daughter of a [[United States Air Force]] colonel. He and Wingate married in 1979. When he died in 2015, he had several grandchildren from his sons and stepdaughter.<ref name="NYTobit"/><ref name="Brown">{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23 |title=Scourge and poet |first=Andrew |last=Brown |author-link=Andrew Brown (writer) |newspaper=The Guardian |date=15 February 2003 |accessdate=4 August 2015}}</ref>

==Later life==
[[File:Aretha Franklin honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.jpg|thumb|right|Conquest (left) receiving the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]] with [[Aretha Franklin]] (middle) and [[Alan Greenspan]] (right) at the [[White House]], November 2005]]

In 1981 Conquest moved to California to take up a post as Senior Research Fellow and Scholar-Curator of the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States Collection at Stanford University's [[Hoover Institution]], where he remained a Fellow.<ref name=Telegraphobit/> In 1985 he signed a petition in support of the anti-Communist [[Contras]] ([[Nicaragua]]).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/document/bhlnicaragua|title=Quand Bernard-Henri Lévy pétitionnait contre le régime légal du Nicaragua|date=1 October 2009|publisher=}}</ref> He was a fellow of the [[Columbia University]]'s Russian Institute, and of the [[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars]]; a distinguished visiting scholar at [[The Heritage Foundation]]; a research associate of [[Harvard University]]'s Ukrainian Research Institute.<ref name="NYTobit"/> In 1990 he presented ''Red Empire'', a seven-part mini-series on the Soviet Union produced by [[Yorkshire Television]].<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol1no1/redempire.html| title = Red Empire| author = McCannon, John| date = Fall 1998| accessdate = 23 June 2014| publisher = The Journal for Multi Media History}}</ref>

Conquest died in 2015 in [[Stanford, California]], at the age of 98, of respiratory failure as a result of [[Parkinson's disease]].<ref name="NYTobit">{{cite news |last=Grimes |first=William |author-link=William Grimes (journalist) |date=4 August 2015 |title=Robert Conquest, Historian Who Documented Soviet Horrors, Dies at 98 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/arts/international/robert-conquest-historian-who-documented-soviet-horrors-dies-at-98.html |newspaper=The New York Times |archive-url=https://archive.today/20160516144031/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/arts/international/robert-conquest-historian-who-documented-soviet-horrors-dies-at-98.html?_r=0 |archive-date=16 May 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="WSJ 4">{{cite news |last1=Cronin |first1=Brenda |last2=Cullison |first2=Alan |date=4 August 2015 |title=Robert Conquest, Seminal Historian of Soviet Misrule, Dies at 98 |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/robert-conquest-seminal-historian-of-soviet-misrule-dies-at-98-1438714647 |newspaper=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |accessdate=4 August 2015}}</ref>

==Awards and honors==
Conquest was a Fellow of the [[British Academy]], the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]], the [[Royal Society of Literature]], and the [[British Interplanetary Society]], and a Member of the [[Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies]].<ref name=Telegraphobit/>

His honours include
*  [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]] (2005)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051103-5.html |title=Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients |publisher=Georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov |accessdate=14 January 2014}}</ref>
* Companion of the [[Order of St Michael and St George]] (CMG; 1996)<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=54255 |date=29 December 1995 |page=3 |supp=y}}</ref>
* Officer of the [[Order of the British Empire]] (OBE; 1955])<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=40366 |date=31 December 1954 |page=13 |supp=y}}</ref>
* Commander Cross of the [[Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland]] (2009)<ref name=Telegraphobit/>
* Estonian [[Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana|Cross of Terra Mariana]] (2008)
* Ukrainian Order of Yaroslav Mudryi (2005).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2006/390616.shtml |title=Ukraine honors Robert Conquest with Presidential Medal of Honor |publisher=Ukrweekly.com |date=24 September 2006 |accessdate=14 January 2014 |archive-date=3 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303224059/http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2006/390616.shtml |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/june21/ppl-062106.html |title=''Stanford Report'', 21 June 2006 |publisher=News.stanford.edu |date=21 June 2006 |accessdate=14 January 2014}}</ref>
*''[[Hearing Secret Harmonies]]'', by [[Anthony Powell]], the final volume in Powell's 12 volume sequence, [[A Dance to the Music of Time]], is dedicated to Conquest.<ref>Jay, Mike. (2013) "Who Were the Dedicatees of Powell’s Works?" ''The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter.''50 (spring): 9–10.</ref>
*A street in (the Ukrainian city of) [[Dnipro]] was renamed after Robert Conquest in February 2024<ref>{{cite web|title=Streets of world-famous researchers of the Holodomor appeared in Dnipro|url=https://www.istpravda.com.ua/short/2024/02/7/163623/|date=7 February 2024|access-date=9 February 2024|language=Ukrainian|website=[[Istorychna Pravda]]}}</ref>

His awards include:
* Selection by the [[National Endowment for the Humanities]] to deliver the 1993 [[Jefferson Lecture]] (the highest honor the U.S. government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities)
* Richard Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters (1999)<ref name="Brown"/>
* [[Michael Braude Award for Light Verse]] (American Academy of Arts & Letters,1997)<ref name="Brown"/>
* [[Dan David Prize]] (2012).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dandavidprize.org |title=The Dan David Prize: Laureates 2012:Robert Conquest |work=dandavidprize.org |accessdate=6 August 2015 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120425145608/http://www.dandavidprize.org/laureates/laureates-2012/128-2012-past-historybiography/339--robert-conquest.html |archivedate=25 April 2012 }}</ref> 
*Conquest was a member of the advisory council of the [[Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation]].<ref>''National Advisory Council''. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 20 May 2011.</ref>
* [[Antonovych prize]] (1987)

==Selected works==
'''Historical and political'''
{{refbegin|26em|normalfont=yes}}
* ''[https://archive.org/details/commonsenseaboutrussia Common Sense About Russia]'' (1960)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/powerpolicyussr Power and Policy in the U.S.S.R.: The Struggle for Stalin's Succession 1945-1960]'' (1961)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities'' (1960)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/pasternakaffair Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair]'' (1961)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/russiaafterkhrushchev Russia After Khrushchev]'' (1965)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/politicsideasussr The Politics of Ideas in the USSR]'' (1967)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/sovietnationalitiesinpractice Soviet Nationalities Policy in Practice]'' (1967)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/industrialworkersussrconquest Industrial Workers in the USSR]'' (1967)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/agriculturalworkersussr Agricultural Workers in the USSR]'' (1968)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/religionintheussr Religion in the U.S.S.R.]'' (1968)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/sovietpolsystemconquest The Soviet Political System]'' (1968)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/sovietpolicesystemconquest The Soviet Police System]'' (1968)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/justiceandlegalsystemussr Justice and the Legal System in the U.S.S.R.]'' (1968)
* ''[[The Great Terror|The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties]]'' (1968)
** ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment'' (1990)<ref name="Brown"/>
** ''The Great Terror: 40th Anniversary Edition'' (2008)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/conquest-where-marx-went-wrong-1970 Where Marx Went Wrong]'' (1970)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/thenationkillers The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities]'' (1970)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/conquestrobertthehumancostofsovietcommunism The Human Cost of Soviet Communism]'' (Prepared for the [[United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security|Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws]], of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 1970)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/vileninconquest V.I. Lenin]'' (1972)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''The Russian Tradition'' (with Tibor Szamuely, 1974)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/conquest-robert-kolyma-the-artic-death-camps_202012 Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps]'' (1979)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/presentdangerconquest Present Danger: Towards a Foreign Policy]'' (1979)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/weandtheyrobertconquest We & They: Civic & Despotic Cultures]'' (1980)<ref name="Brown"/> 
* ''The Man-made Famine in Ukraine'' (with [[James Mace]], Michael Novak and Dana Dalrymple, 1984)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/whattodowhentherussianscome What to Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor's Guide]'' (with [[Jon Manchip White]], 1984)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Inside Stalin's Secret Police: NKVD Politics, 1936–1939'' (1985)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[[The Harvest of Sorrow|The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine]]'' (1986)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet Future'' (1986)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/tyrantsandtypewriters Tyrants and Typewriters: Communiques in the Struggle for Truth]'' (1989)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Stalin and the Kirov Murder'' (1989)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[[Stalin: Breaker of Nations]]'' (1991)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''History, Humanity, and Truth'' (1993)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/ReflectionsOnARavagedCentury Reflections on a Ravaged Century]'' (1999)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History'', [[W. W. Norton & Company]] (2004), {{ISBN|0-393-05933-2}}
{{refend}}

'''Journal articles'''
* [http://doi.org/10.2307/20039340 The Limits of Detente.] ''Foreign Affairs'', ''46''(4), pp.&nbsp;733–742.
* [http://doi.org/10.2307/20039460 Stalin's Successors.] (1970) ''Foreign Affairs'', ''48''(3), pp.&nbsp;509–524.
* [http://doi.org/10.2307/20039523 A New Russia? A New World?] (1975) ''Foreign Affairs'', ''53''(3), pp.&nbsp;482–497. 
* [http://doi.org/10.2307/130291 Revisionizing Stalin's Russia.] (1987) The Russian Review, ''46''(4), pp.&nbsp;386–390.
* [http://www.jstor.org/stable/42894861 Academe and the Soviet Myth]. (1993) ''The National Interest'', ''31'', pp.&nbsp;91–98.
* [http://www.jstor.org/stable/42897201 Toward an English-Speaking Union]. (1999) ''The National Interest'', (57), pp.&nbsp;64–70.
* [http://www.jstor.org/stable/42897501 Downloading Democracy]. (2004) ''The National Interest'', (78), pp.&nbsp;29–32.

'''Poetry'''
* ''Poems'' (1956)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Back to Life: Poems from behind the Iron Curtain''  as translator/editor (1958)
* ''Between Mars and Venus'' (1962)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Arias from a Love Opera, and Other Poems'' (1969)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Forays'' (1979)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''New and Collected Poems'' (1988)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Demons Don't'' (1999)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Penultimata'' (2009)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''A Garden of Erses'' [limericks, as Jeff Chaucer] (2010)<ref name="Brown"/>
* ''Blokelore and Blokesongs'' (2012)<ref name="Brown"/>

'''Novels'''
* ''A World of Difference'' (1955)<ref name="NYTobit"/>
* ''The Egyptologists'' (with Kingsley Amis, 1965)<ref name="NYTobit"/>

'''Criticism'''
* ''The Abomination of Moab'' (1979)<ref name="NYTobit"/>

==References==
{{Reflist|26em}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
{{Commons category}}
*{{IMDb name|id=2184567}}
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/features/0,12887,902797,00.html ''Scourge and Poet''], a profile of Robert Conquest
* [http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/robert-conquest/ articles by and about Robert Conquest at the ''New York Review of Books'']
* [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/conquest-historian-poet-081610.html "Stanford legend Robert Conquest: new books at 93 for the historian and poet,"] by Cynthia Haven, ''Stanford Report,'' 16 August 2010
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140116070649/http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-conquest100101.shtml ''Where Ignorance Isn't Bliss''], article by Robert Conquest at ''National Review Online''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100516045553/http://www.hoover.org/bios/conquest.html His biography] at the [[Hoover Institution]] 
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090923214706/http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/17830254.html Great Terror at 40] 
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120423220615/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/july-dec99/conquest_12-24.html Elizabeth Farnsworth talks with historian Robert Conquest about his new book ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century''] at [[PBS]] 
* [http://www.spartacus-educational.com/HISconquest.htm Robert Conquest profile at Spartacus site]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120321170814/http://ukrainianstudies.stanford.edu/ConquestUkr.html Robert Conquest's profile at Stanford University, Ukrainian Studies Department webpage]
* [https://www.hoover.org/news/remembering-robert-conquest Remembering Robert Conquest]. The Hoover Institution.
* {{C-SPAN|1990}} 
* [[John B. Dunlop|Dunlop, J.]], & [[Norman Naimark|Naimark, N.]] (2016). "Robert Conquest, 1917{{endash}}2015". ''Slavic Review''. ''75''(1), 238–239. {{doi|10.5612/slavicreview.75.1.238}}

{{1994 Shevchenko National Prize}}
{{Antonovych prize winners}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Conquest, Robert}}
[[Category:1917 births]]
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[[Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford]]
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[[Category:Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George]]
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