Lennart Samuelson

Lennart Samuelson is an affiliated researcher at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) since 2008. He earned his Ph.D. at the Institute for Research in Economic History at the Stockholm School of Economics, in 1996. He was a guest researcher at the National Defence College in 1996-2001 and Waern visiting professor at the Institute for Studies in History at the University of Gothenburg, in 2011-2012.

Samuelson’s research in Russian economic history re-started when the archives opened in 1992. His major research topic is the development of the Soviet military-industrial complex from the 1930s onwards. He has participated in several research projects on Soviet agrarian history of the 1930s, on the Great Terror 1937-38 and the Gulag camp system, and also on Sweden’s relations with the Soviet Union in the Cold War period. His research results have been rewarded by several institutions. The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities rewarded its prestigious Rettig Prize in 2014 to Samuelson for his fundamental research and innovative grasp of the Russian archival materials.

On 4 November 2014, for organizing Swedish-Russian economic-historical workshops and conferences at Stockholm School of Economics and Gothenburg university, for arranging study visits for Russian archivists in Stockholm and for Swedish scholars in Moscow, as well as for his spreading knowledge on Russian history to the Swedish public, he was awarded Orden Druzhby (the Friendship Order) by President Vladimir Putin at the National Day ceremony in the Kremlin.