Maria Fedorova

Maria Fedorova arrived at Macalester in the fall of 2019 as a Wallin Postdoctoral Fellow in Russian and Modern European History. A Moscow native, she came to the United States as a Fulbright Fellow, receiving an MA degree in History at Washington State University and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Fedorova’s research focuses on the transnational circulation of knowledge and technologies between Russia/Soviet Union and the world during the twentieth century.

Her first book Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921-1935 (forthcoming in August 2025 with the Northern Illinois University Press) focuses on the American and Soviet exchange of agricultural knowledge and technology during the interwar period. Amid the post–World War I food insecurity, Soviet and American agricultural experts relied on transnational networks, bridging ideological differences. As Soviets traveled across the US agricultural regions and Americans plowed steppes in the southern Urals and the lower Volga, both groups believed that innovative solutions could be found beyond their own national borders.

Fedorova teaches courses on Russian and Soviet history, the transnational history of food and agriculture, and the history of science and technology. Her courses are cross-listed with the History Department and the Food, Agriculture, and Society concentration.

Selected Publications:

• Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in
  Agriculture, 1921-1935 (Northern Illinois University Press,
  forthcoming in August 2025).
• “Mapping Food – Teaching Global Connections,” Agricultural
  History 97, no. 4 (November 2023): 673-676.
• “Bread or Iron? Competing Visions of American Aid to Soviet
  Russia, 1921-1923,” Agricultural History 97, no. 2 (May 2023):
  245-272.
• “The Untold Story of “Radical Relief” to Soviet Russia,” NYU
  Jordan Center Blog, March 28, 2023.
• “American Tractors, Soviet Soil: Agricultural Reconstruction
  and U.S.-Soviet Technology Transfer, 1921-23,” in Anthony J.
  Heywood, Scott W. Palmer, and Julia A. Lajus, eds., Science,
  Technology, Environment, and Medicine in Russia’s Great War
  and Revolution, 1914-1922 (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2022):
  203-228.
• Translation: Evgenii O. Naumov, “The Red Army and
  Epidemic Disease in the Russian Civil War,” trans. by Maria
  Fedorova in Anthony J. Heywood, Scott W. Palmer, and Julia
  A. Lajus, eds., Science, Technology, Environment, and
  Medicine in Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914-1922
  (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2022): 471-494.
• “Seeds as Technology: The Russian Agricultural Bureau in New
  York and Soviet Agricultural Modernization, 1921-26,” Russian
  Review 80, no. 2 (April 2021): 209-228.