Haley Stodart

Professor Williams
Historiography
29 August 2021
Interview with Dr. Elaine Mackinnon
It became apparent early on in the interview process that I had never really spoken
intently with a historian that wasn’t a scholar in my field of study. As I conversed with Dr.
Elaine Mackinnon about her career in Russian and Cold War history, she explained: “I accepted
history because I wasn’t comfortable losing myself in stuff from centuries ago…I was more
interested in what was going on today, but historical context is necessary to understanding that so
I felt I needed to study it.”1 This statement struck me. In my historical career, I had done just
what she avoided; lost myself in stories from centuries ago. As a Classicist and Early American
historian, I was so accustomed to analyzing sources and engaging in conversations about a by-
gone era. I didn’t know anyone who could tell me what it felt like in the Senate House of ancient
Greece or Rome, but Dr. Mackinnon could tell me the feeling of being in front of a Cold War
tank, a first-hand, primary experience into the history in which she studied.

This history was not one that she jumped into right away, however. It was not until
Graduate School that Mackinnon decided to dive into the past. As an undergrad, she majored in
Russian language with a concentration in the political science and culture, not so much
linguistics. Her reasoning towards choosing this degree was simply that it was important in her
life in that moment: “This was the 70’s and 80’s and I was really interested in what was
happening at the time in the USSR.”2

After undergrad, she entertained ideas of government work. “I looked at the NSA but I
was advised…not to go there if I ever wanted to go to the Soviet Union.”3 So she turned to
teaching high school, something she pursued for five years. However, a key revelation in her life
was when she realized she loved the subject more than the 15-year-olds, and working with
material meant more than teaching, so she decided to go to graduate school.

However, the desire to leave rowdy 15 years olds behind was not her only incentive to
enter graduate school. Mackinnon was also inspired by her undergraduate advisor, Stephen
1
Elaine Mackinnon, interview of author, video chat, August 20, 2021.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
Kotkin. A renowned political scientist, Kotkin was a major player in Cold War studies. He had a
more revisionists view of Stalin and Soviet politics than traditional historiography at the time.
While much of the research then (and now) focused on a top-down aspect of the USSR, Kotkin
believed that those below didn’t just follow those above due to fear and violence; he saw that
there was genuine support from those below within the Soviet system, and focused on the larger
political patterns as a result of such.4

Despite her interest in the field, Mackinnon chose not to follow in Kotkin’s political
science footsteps, but instead carve her own path in the field of history. This path led her to the
USSR, but in an unexpected way. Mackinnon explained how she was supposed to visit the
Soviet Union in 1983, but her program was canceled because a Korean Airliner carrying “an
American congressman” was shot down over Soviet Airspace. This created “a dent in relations”
between the US and the USSR.5 As a result, she wasn’t able to go the Soviet Union until 1991
when she was working on her dissertation. However, this delayed trip placed her directly into the
history she studied; Elaine was there during the coup of Gorbachev. “I got lucky. They were
reluctant to make [the coup] violent, so I was fortunate to be there on the barricade and formed a
line and stopped the tanks…Only three people died that day.”6

Hearing this, I realized that Mackinnon not only studied primary and secondary sources
but she is a primary and secondary source herself! I have never been able to study things
affecting me so personally (aside from my frustrations of having my passion being misconstrued
by men on Reddit).7 Yet her experience and research made her an active agent in the
historiography of the Cold War. This understanding was called to my mind a few days later in
class, when Dr. Williams mentioned that we often “study our life.”8 Dr. Mackinnon’s life was
actively affected by the Cold War, and it was so personal to her as an individual that her studies
focused on specific persons and their connections to larger story as well.

4
Ibid.
5
Mackinnon, Interview.
6
Ibid.
7
This is a reference to Not All Dead White Men, a book by Donna Zuckerberg that breaks down the misuse,
misunderstanding, and misconstruing of classical text and history by far-right groups such as the Red Pill, Neo
Nazis, and more through online platforms. They spread hate, ignorance, and sexism/racism through the use of
ancient sources.
8
Nadejda Williams, Historiography class, video chat, August 26, 2021.
 Unlike Kotkin, Mackinnon did not have the desire to go big or go home when it came to
historical analysis. She chose to focus on stories of regular people and personal narratives that
she found interesting.9 This was something that, according to her, many people in her field found
to be simplistic:

“I feel that the individual matters…there is heavy influence by literary theory and cultural
framework of analysis and if you aren’t able to take what you are doing and show how it
fits within the larger framework, it gets criticized…I have a problem with abstractions; I
like to find the story and then figure it out.”10

This was something Mackinnon achieved, having recognized that individuals of the time can
help tell the larger narrative. This made Mackinnon unique in her field of historiography, turning
the traditional trend around and making it more culturally focused than her colleagues, who were
often more concerned with politics and leadership. However, Mackinnon noticed that trends in
the field are starting to change.

When she entered the field, Cold War historiography focused on the binary of the US and
the USSR, but Mackinnon is starting to see an increase in a global approach. It is no longer seen
as a war of arms control and nuclear scares, but in fact a cultural and social phenomenon that
affected things from chess matches to the Olympics. There is also a shift away from claiming
this was not a “hot war,” as the global approach acknowledges the other nations, cultures, and
people affected by the military violence of the time. Mackinnon felt that in most ways she was
thrilled with the changing trends, but she also enjoys going back to the political and biographical
analysis as well. “There is still so much to be done because a lot of archives just opened in ’91,
so there is still an effort to understand what it was like to live in that society.”11

Despite the topics of study in the field starting to diversify, the historians themselves
were not. Mackinnon emphasized in the interview that there was great gender diversity within
the field of Cold War studies, with women in important fields that break away from “appropriate

9
Her approach was similar to that of Blanton and Cook, in which these authors also took the stories of individuals
and turned them into case studies that revealed larger trends for women in the Civil War.
Deanne Blanton and Lauren Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2002).
10
Mackinnon, Interview.
11
Ibid.
topics”, now dealing with ideas of gender, media, and more.12 However, minority scholars are
few and far between, receiving little encouragement or support to enter the field until recently.
According to Mackinnon, there is a push to study the way the USSR “embraced the cause of civil
rights across the world and took advantage of civil unrest in the US. W.E.B. Dubois [even]
toured the Soviet Union during the war.”13 There is also an interest to focus on central Asia, and
these new emphases have been ways that the field has been hoping to reach out to minority
scholars and students, but “they are lacking at the current moment.”14

This brought to mind a major issue that we have explored in class regarding
representation within the field of historiography. In their article Advancing Feminism Online,
Victoria Leonard and Sarah Bond highlight how the unbalanced gendered nature of Wikipedia
scholarship creates a bias that “determines what is included and excluded…and how articles are
written. Content is skewed by lack of female participation.”15 Though focused on gender (which
Mackinnon claims is not a huge issue at the moment), this sentiment still rings true for minorities
in the field of Cold War history. If their voices and viewpoints are not shared, then content is
unbalanced and the scholarship suffers as a result.

As this interview came to a close, I realized that my own historical experience was a bit
unbalanced as well. I had spent so much of my academic and professional career focused on
history that was so removed on the timeline (but not in importance) that I had never really taken
the time to engage in conversation with those whose focus was in the now. They were active in
present movements in ways that were different than my own. While there are historians in my
field making moves in this fashion, I am unsure if I want to join them. I am convinced, however,
that I need to engage in dialogue with them, and look forward to the next opportunity to do so.

12
This gender diversity within the field was strictly on a binary scale. Mackinnon failed mention anyone on the
spectrum of gender other than men and women, so therefore transgender, cisgender, and other non-binary
individuals were not included in this view. This does open up the opportunity for further research into the makeup of
historians in the field.
13
Mackinnon, interview.
14
Ibid.
15
Victoria Leonard and Sarah Bond, “Advancing Feminism Online,” Online Tools, Visibility, and Women in
Classics, last accessed August 19, 2021.
Bibliography
Blanton, Deanne and Lauren Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil
War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.
Leonard, Victoria and Sarah Bond. “Advancing Feminism Online,” Online Tools, Visibility, and
Women in Classics. Last accessed August 19, 2021.