De'Vonte Tinsley

De’Vonte Tinsley is a first-year history doctoral student studying Soviet and Vietnamese history. De’Vonte is interested in many aspects of the Soviet-Vietnamese relationship, such as Vietnamese revolutionaries studying, working, and living in the Soviet Union, cultural connections formed between the two countries such as friendships, marriages, and children, and the lasting cultural, socio-economic, and political influence of the Soviet Union on Vietnam. In particular, De’Vonte is interested in the Soviet-Vietnamese relationship following Vietnamese unification in 1975, when cultural, political, and military ties increased sharply between the two countries. Within this time frame, De’Vonte has two major questions he would like to investigate. The first question involves the role of Soviet economic aid, advice, and ideological influence in helping Vietnam rebuild war-torn southern Vietnam. The second question De’Vonte hopes to explore is the divergence between Soviet and Vietnamese economic and political reforms in the 1980s, and why Soviet Perestroika and Glasnost failed, while the Vietnamese equivalent Đổi Mới (renovation) succeeded in implementing elements of a market economy and keeping the Communist Party in power.

Before coming to Penn, De'Vonte worked on the concept of a Kaleidoscope of Revolutions, which explored the Russian Revolution and Civil War through a local lens. In particular, De'Vonte wrote his Senior thesis on Dvinsk (Daugavpils), using the local newspaper Krasnoe znamia (Red Banner), which he collected while living in Daugavpils, to explore life in the city during the Revolution and Civil War. The paper, “Revolution on the Daugava: Dvinsk in the Context of War, Revolution, and Civil War”,  focused on topics as broad as Party organization, Soviet Democracy, Bolshevik nationality policy, famine, and economic collapse. While moving on to topics related to Soviet-Vietnamese relations, De'Vonte hopes to continue to develop his research on Daugavpils.

De'Vonte's work has appeared in the Wilson Center: Kennan Institute’s “The Russia File” Blog and ASEES online newspaper NewsNet.
 

Prior to joining Penn’s History community, De'vonte worked as a secondary school history teacher, teaching world history at William Fleming High School in Roanoke, Virginia, his hometown. De'Vonte also spent some time working in the Latvian National Library and the Communist Party Archive in Riga. During that 2022 research/language study trip, De'Vonte visited all three Baltic States, as well as Belarus.

Advisor: Peter Holquist