Rob Dale

@robdale.bsky.social

2128 Followers 1296 Following

Historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. Cyclist, marathon runner, train traveller. Based in Newcastle and York. Osbaldwick cricket club cap no.247

World cup cricket pyjama kits!
My Osbaldwick CC cap on the popular bank at Scarborough.
A pile of recent Routledge books.
The cover of Kate Atkinson's, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.
Donkey Kong Game and Watch.
Team sheet for Osbaldwick 3rdXI Vs Heworth on Sunday.
Become a blood donor poster
The cover of Jonathan Coe's Middle England (2019)
Scorecard of cricket match.
Urban Ground - Cities/In/For Nature - Conference poster
Tea infuser like a person taking a dip in a mug
Filofax diary refill for 2027
Osbaldwick CC 3rdXI Teamsheet
Hasan Ali doing the iconic mic drop celebrating after helping Yorkshire beat Derbyshire in the T20 Blast
The cover of Oleksandr Mykhed's The Language of War
A photo of a paperback copy of Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Survive: Petrograd 1919 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,2026)
Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Ed Milliband
Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, is widely expected to be the largest party in the Senedd after the elections and, unless Labour and Reform UK form some extraordinary version of their own Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Plaid will be the only party with a realistic chance of forming a government. Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid leader, would be the first non-Labour first minister of Wales since devolution. Assuming the SNP remain in power in Scotland (almost certain), and with Sinn Féin the largest party at Stormont, this would mean nationalists leading the three non-English nations in the UK.
Youngest garbed in orange.
The cover of Sinéad Morrissey's - Among Communists: A Memoir (2026)
The cover of Konstantin Paustovsky - The Story of a Life
Cat hiding in a tree.
The cover of Brian J. Boeck's "Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov
The bit of the Bayeux Tapestry with Harold removing an arrow from his eye.
Copies of Brian J Boeck - Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov (for which I paid £8.99) and Ronaldo Grigor Suny's Stalin: Passage to Revolution (also £8.99)
Pink magnolia starting to enter flower
A 180 at darts!
My cat basking in the sun on a sofa.
The cover of William Germano's On Revision
The programme for the York Dance Festival on Saturday 7 March
Pink magnolia in flower at the National Archives
Blue fountain pen.
Two x female 2.8mm spade connectors soldered to a dynamo lighting circuit.
Amarilis in white with pink highlights.
A light show projection on Clifford's Tower in York.
The cover of Ekaterina Pravilova - The Ruble: A Political History (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Blue fountain pen.
The cover of Mark Smith's new book Exist Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilizy 1953-1991
A green milk crate containing a lot of paper files.
The cover of Rustamjon Urinboyev's book Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in Russia. It showed migrant workers in orange florescent jackets in a landscape of pallets and rubbish bags
The cover of Mark B. Smith's book Exit Stalin. It has some photos of people in a Lada car (I think it is a Lada) in front of a very late socialist looking building.
The cover of Teaching History (the secondary education journal of the Historical Association)No.201 December 2025, which has an article by me in.
York railway station looking cold and very quiet.