Richard Brian Spence (b. ca. 1951)[1] is an American historian and Professor of History at the
University of Idaho. He specializes in modern Russian, military, espionage and occult history. He has produced biographies of
Sidney Reilly and
Aleister Crowley. He has been interviewed for various documentaries on the
History Channel and is a consultant for the
International Spy Museum in Washington, DC.
Biography
Spence earned a Ph.D. from the
University of California, Santa Barbara (1981) and taught there as a visiting assistant professor from 1981 to '85. He has been affiliated with the University of Idaho since 1986. His primary areas of study are modern Russian, modern European, Middle Eastern, and military history. He has published several books and is the author of numerous articles in Revolutionary Russia, Intelligence and National Security, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism, American Communist History, The Historian, and other academic journals in addition to articles in general audience magazines. He is known as Rick Spence.
Works
Books
Boris Savinkov: Renegade on the Left. Boulder, Col.: East European Monographs (1991).
Scholar, Patriot, Mentor: Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevic, with Linda L. Nelson (eds). Boulder, Col.: East European Monographs.
"Catching Louis Fraina: Loyal Communist, US Government Informant, or British Agent?" American Communist History, vol. 11, no. 1 (Apr. 2012), pp. 81–97.
"Death in the Adirondacks: Amtorg, Intrigue, and the Dubious Demise of Isaiya Khurgin and Efraim Sklyansky, August 1925." American Communist History, vol. 14, no. 2 (Aug. 2015), pp. 135–158.
Book contributions
"Boris I of Bulgaria." In: Dictionary of World Biography, vol. 2, edited by Frank Northen Magill and Alison Aves.
Routledge (1998).
ISBN978-1579580414.