Publications

These are my academic and research publications. There is also an archive of my journalism here, and more recent articles on my blog here.

Books:

Communist Dissidents in early Soviet Russia (Troubadour Publishing, 2023). More information here. 

Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto Press, 2018). More information here.

As co-editor with James Henderson, and contributor, The Russian Gas Matrix: How Markets are Driving Change (Oxford University Press, 2014) 

Russkaya revoliutsiia v otstuplenii (Novyi Khronograf, 2013). Russian edition of The Russian Revolution in Retreat. (More information here (in Russian).)

Change in Putin’s Russia: Power, Money and People (2010, Pluto Press). (A blog that I wrote around the time of publication, with more information, is here.)

As editor of and author of Introduction, Conclusion and chapter on Ukraine: Russian and CIS gas markets and their impact on Europe (Oxford University Press, January 2009). (More information here.)

The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite (Routledge (BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European studies), 2008). (More information, including related articles and reviewers' comments, here.)

Joint editor, with Donald Filtzer, Wendy Goldman and Gijs Kessler: A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History (Peter Lang, 2008). Author of chapter: “Mass mobilisation versus participatory democracy: Moscow workers and the Bolshevik expropriation of political power”.

With Oleg Dubrovskii: Fighting back in Ukraine: a worker who took on the bureaucrats and bosses (Index Books, London, 1997). Published on line 2014 here.

With John McCormack: Polmaise: the fight for a pit, by John McCormack (Index Books, London, 1989). Published on line 2015 here.


Working papers, book chapters, comments and articles in academic journals:

How Energy Was Commodified, and How It Could Be Decommodified. Paper presented at the on-line conference of the POLLEN Political Ecology Network, September 2020. Downloadable here

With Jack Sharples, Katja Yafimava and Vitaly Yermakov: Implications of the Russia-Ukraine gas transit deal for alternative pipeline routes and the Ukrainian and European markets (Oxford Energy Insight, March 2020). Downloadable here.

With Jack Sharples: The Russia-Ukraine transit deal: opening a new chapter (Oxford Energy Insight, February 2020). Downloadable here.

Central Asian gas: prospects for the 2020s (OIES working paper, December 2019). Downloadable here.

With Tatiana Mitrova and Jack Sharples: Russia-Ukraine transit talks: risks for all sides (OIES Energy Insight, December 2019). Downloadable here.

Russia-Ukraine transit talks: the risks to gas in Europe (Oxford Energy Comment, May 2019). Downloadable here.

“The Politics of Working Class Dissent in Early Soviet Russia, 1920-22”, in: Sarah Badcock, Liudmila Novikova and Aaron Retish (eds.), Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914-22 (Bloomington, In.: Slavica, 2018), vol. 3, book 3, pp. 351-372
Let's Not Exaggerate: Southern Gas Corridor Prospects to 2030 (OIES working paper, July 2018). Downloadable here.

After the Gazprom-Naftogaz arbitration: commerce still entangled in politics (Oxford Energy Insight, March 2018). Downloadable here.

Adversity and reform: Ukrainian gas market prospects (OIES Energy Insight, March 2017). Downloadable here.

Azerbaijan's gas supply squeeze and implications for the "southern corridor" (OIES Working Paper, July 2016). Downloadable here.

With Katja Yafimava: Russian Gas Transit Across Ukraine post-2019 - pipeline scenarios, gas flow consequences and regulatory constraints (OIES Working Paper, March 2016). Downloadable here.

Ukraine: the end of post-Soviet gas pricing (Oxford Energy Forum, August 2015). Downloadable here.


With Jonathan Stern and Katja Yafimava: Does the cancellation of South Stream signal a fundamental reorientation of Russian gas export policy? (Oxford Energy Comment, January 2015). Downloadable here.

"The Ukraine crisis: another crossroads on Russia's downward path" (Oxford Energy Forum, August 2014). Downloadable here..

Ukraine's imports of Russian gas: how a deal might be reached (Oxford Energy Comment, July 2014). Downloadable here.

As lead author: What the Ukraine Crisis Means for Gas Markets (Oxford Energy Comment, March 2014). Downloadable here

“Marktmacht: Erdgas in Zentralasien und im Kaspiraum” [Market Power: Natural Gas in Central Asia and the Caspian] in Osteuropa 63, July 2013, pp. 45-61.

Consumers as Players in the Russian Gas Sector (Oxford Energy Comment, January 2013). Downloadable here.

Central Asian and Caspian Gas Production and the Constraints on Export (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, December 2012). Downloadable here.

With James Henderson and Katja Yafimava: “CIS Gas Pricing: Towards European netback?”, in Jonathan Stern (ed.), The Pricing of Internationally Traded Gas (Oxford University Press, 2012).

“Russo-Ukrainian Gas Wars and the Call on Transit Governance”, in Caroline Kuzemko, Andrei Belyi, Andreas Goldthau and Michael Keating (eds.), Dynamics of Energy Governance in Europe and Russia (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

"What makes Russian capitalism: a response to Ruslan Dzarasov”, in Debatte: journal of contemporary central and eastern Europe, 2011 nos. 1-2.

Elusive Potential: Natural Gas Consumption in the CIS and the Quest for Efficiency (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, July 2011). Downloadable here.

With Jonathan Stern and Katja Yafimava: The April 2010 Russo-Ukrainian gas agreement and its implications for Europe (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, June 2010). Downloadable here.

“Am Tropf: Die Ukraine, Russland und das Erdgas” [“Ukraine’s Gas Sector, Russia and the Economic Crisis”], in Osteuropa, spring 2010, pp. 237-256.

The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Russian and CIS Gas Markets (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, November 2009). Downloadable here.

With Jonathan Stern and Katja Yafimava: The Russo-Ukrainian gas dispute of 2009: a comprehensive assessment (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, February 2009). Downloadable here.

Ukraine’s gas sector (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, July 2007). Downloadable here.

“The party elite, the industrial managers and the cells: early stages in the formation of the Soviet ruling class in Moscow, 1922-23”, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 19, no. 2, December 2006, pp. 197-228.

With Terry Brotherstone: “Were there alternatives? Movements from below in the Scottish coalfield, the Communist Party, and the development of Thatcherism, 1981-1985”. Critique, no. 36, 2005.

“The Moscow Workers' Movement in 1921 and the Role of Non-Partyism”. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56 no.1, 2004.

“Class Clashes With Party: Politics in Moscow between the Civil War and the New Economic Policy”. Historical Materialism, Vol. 11, no. 2, 2003.

“‘State Patriotism’ in Gennady Zyuganov's Politics and Ideology”. Slovo, Vol. 10, nos. 1/2, 1998.


Reviews:

Review of Per Hogselius, Red Gas: Russia and the Origins of European Energy Dependence, in American Historical Review, spring 2014

Review of James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello, The Oil Road: journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London, in International Affairs, January 2013.

Review of Richard Sakwa, The Quality of Freedom: Khodorkovsky, Putin and the Yukos Affair, in Slavonic and East European Review, winter 2011.

Review of Greg Muttitt, Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, in International Affairs, October 2011.

Review of T.N. Marketos, China's energy geopolitics: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Central Asia, in Central Asia Survey, vol. 30 no. 1 (March 2011)

Review of I. Starodubrovskaia and V. Mau, Velikie revoliutsii ot Kromvellia do Putina, in Sotsial’naia Istoriia: ezhegodnik 2010 (2010)

Review of Jeffrey Rossman, Worker Resistance Under Stalin, in Labor History, no. 4, 2006.

Review of Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime 1919-1924 in Revolutionary History Vol. 5 No. 4 (1994)


Other reports and articles:

I contributed to Sea Change: climate emergency, jobs and managing the phase-out of UK oil and gas extraction (May 2019)

Investigation into the death of the Ukrainian journalist Gyorgy Gongadze. I authored or co-authored four reports on the case, published by the International Federation of Journalists and other NGOs. Downloadable here: no. 1, no. 2, no. 3 and no. 4

"Cracking the new Atlantic triangle", Variant magazine, Spring 2007. Downloadable here.

Shell in Nigeria – oil and gas reserves crisis and political risks: shared concerns for investors and producer-communities. A briefing to Shell shareholders, June 2004. Read about it, and download it, here.

Behind the mask of corporate social responsibility: Shell in Nigeria – Christian Aid report, January 2004. I contributed the case study on Shell in Nigeria to this report. Downloadable here.


Journalism:

There is an archive of my journalism here.