Professional Affiliation

Professor, Political Science, United States Military Academy, West Point

Expert Bio

Thomas Sherlock is a professor of political science at the United States Military Academy, West Point. He received his doctorate in political science from Columbia University and teaches courses on comparative politics, democracy and democratization, comparative institutions, international security, and the politics of the post-Soviet region. His book, Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, was published in an expanded, translated edition in 2014 by Rosspen (Moscow), a leading academic publisher. He is also the co-author of The Fight for Legitimacy: Democracy vs. Terrorism.  Thom has contributed chapters to several edited volumes and his articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Comparative Politics, Washington Quarterly, National Interest, Problems of Communism, Ab Imperio, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Prepodavanie istorii i obshchestvovedeniia v shkole (Russia), and Rossiia v global’noi politike (Russia).  He has also written chapters for White Paper volumes on Russia (2019) and China (2019) commissioned by the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA, Department of Defense) in its Future of Global Competition and Conflict project.

Thom’s opinion pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times (international edition), the Washington Post (the Monkey Cage) and other news outlets. He has served as a consultant or project manager for the Carnegie Council, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Open Society Foundations (Ukraine), and EUROCLIO in The Netherlands, among other institutions.  He has given invited presentations at Columbia University, Yale University, Wesleyan University, the U.S. European Command (EUCOM), Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, the Institute of History of Ukraine (Academy of Sciences), and other academic and government institutions.  Thom frequently conducts field research in post-Soviet space, including the supervision of large-N national surveys and focus groups in Russia. His current research, which is supported by grants from the Minerva Initiative and the Kennan Institute, examines the character of Russian nationalism; popular and elite assessments of Russian history; and the quality of democratic values in Russia. 

Wilson Center Project

Political Uses of History During Periods of Reform in the Soviet Union

Project Summary

Explains why unorthodox opinions about Soviet history have replaced the long-standing orchestration of views about the Soviet past and the implications of this development for the continued use of historical myths to legitimate the political system. Focuses primarily on the role of Mikhail Gorbachev.