Paul Avrich (August 4, 1931 – February 16, 2006) was a historian of the 19th and early 20th century anarchist movement in Russia and the United States. He taught at Queens College, City University of New York, for his entire career, from 1961 to his retirement as distinguished professor of history in 1999. He wrote ten books, mostly about anarchism, including topics such as the 1886 Haymarket Riot, 1921 Sacco and Vanzetti case, 1921 Kronstadt naval base rebellion, and an oral history of the movement. As an ally of the movement's major figures, he sought to challenge the portrayal of anarchists as amoral and violent, and collected papers from these figures that he donated as a 20,000-item collection to the Library of Congress. Early and personal life Paul Avrich was born August 4, 1931, in Brooklyn to parents of Jewish and Ukrainian heritage from Odessa. His parents, Rose (née Zapol) Avrich and Murray Avrich, were a Yiddish theater actress and a dress manufacturer, respectively. In the early 1950s, he served in the Korean War with the U.S. Air Force. Avrich completed his undergraduate studies at Cornell University in 1952, and his graduate studies at Columbia University in 1961. His doctoral dissertation addressed the labor movement in the Russian Revolution. Avrich was among the first American exchange students to study in the Soviet Union when it opened during the Khrushchev Thaw. Anarchists he met through his research into the anarchist Yiddish newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme sparked his interest in the movement. He later named his cats after Mikhail Bakunin and Piotr Kropotkin. Avrich was married, and had two daughters and a sister. Career Avrich was a historian of the 19th and early 20th century anarchist movement in Russia and the United States. He wrote ten books in his career, mostly about anarchism, including topics such as the 1886 Haymarket Riot, 1921 Sacco and Vanzetti case, 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion, and an oral history of the movement. As a teacher and historian of the anarchist movement, Avrich had sympathy and affection for the cause and became a trusted colleague of its major figures. Accordingly, he sought to communicate to his students an affection and solidarity for anarchists "as people, rather than as militants" and challenged the perception of anarchists as amoral and violent. He wanted his work to resurrect the thought of marginalized anarchists, whom he saw as "pioneers of social justice" worth