Michael T. Florinsky (1894-1981) was a Professor of Economics at Columbia University and author. He served with the Russian Army through the First World War.
He studied at the University of Kiev Law School in his native city and, at the outbreak of World War I, received an artillery commission. He was wounded in action and decorated four times before the 1918 Revolution.
Following the Bolshevik takeover, he settled in England in 1921 to study at the London School of Economics and Kings College, London. Through Paul Vinogradov, the historian of Oxford, he became associated with the Economic and Social History of the World War, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for which he edited 12 volumes on Russia.
He came to the United States as a Columbia student in 1926. He received his master’s degree in 1927 and his doctorate in 1931. He was appointed a full professor in 1956.
He retired in 1963 and moved to Vevey in Switzerland, where he produced his major work that year, the two-volume Russia: A History and an Interpretation. The publication had gone through 10 editions at his death. He is also the author of many other books, including Russia: A Short History and Integrated Europe? He was also the editor of The Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union; Commercial and Tariff History of the Principal European Countries; and The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union.
Prof. Florinsky died in Switzerland in 1981 aged 86.