Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius

Liulevicius is a native of Chicago.⁠[1]

In 1988 he graduated from the University of Chicago, his senior thesis on Karl Follen winning the Emile Karafiol Prize; in 1989 he received an M.A. in modern European history from the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry.⁠[2]

He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Peace, and Revolution in 1994–95, and has taught at the University of Tennessee since 1995.⁠[3]

In 2000 Cambridge University Press published his first book, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I, a study of German soldiers’ experience on the Eastern Front in World War I and its long-term effects, arguing that its lessons were later taken up and radicalized by the Nazis.⁠[4]

Writing in Central European History, Aviel Roshwald praised the book’s use of German and Lithuanian archival sources and called it a brilliant history of a failed imperial enterprise.⁠[4]

On March 1, 2004, issue 10 of Germany’s Der Spiegel carried his invited article Der vergiftete Sieg, on how the First World War in the East shaped Hitler’s murderous worldview.⁠[2]

From 2008 to 2021 he directed the University of Tennessee’s Center for the Study of War and Society.⁠[3]

In 2009 Oxford UniversityUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry Press published his 292-page The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present. Reviewer Rüdiger Ritter summarized its main thesis as being that a German myth of the East was not a primordial constant but arose with modern nationalism, reaching its peak under the Nazi regime.⁠[5]

Ritter also criticized the book as mainly descriptive, saying it does not explain why the myth of the East as “Lebensraum” vanished so quickly after 1945 and lacks a systematic typology of images of the East.⁠[5]

The Winter 2010 newsletter of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies lists him, then an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee, as president-elect for 2010–2012, using the Lithuanian spelling Vėjas Liulevičius.⁠[6]

In November 2013 Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, writing in the Los Angeles Times about denunciations in Stalin’s Soviet Union, referred to his work; he was then Lindsay Young Professor of History at the university.⁠[7]

In February 2014 the center he led and the UT Libraries received a grant of about $19,000 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to digitize 167 oral histories of World War II veterans, and the center received $100,000 from the estate of the late Col. John Bradley McKinney; he said the funds would help keep the center active in educating the public about war and society in American and world history.⁠[8]

On October 1, 2015, he was the featured professor in an online live chat hosted by The Great Courses, which by then had produced six recorded lecture courses by him on World War I, espionage, dictatorships, diplomacy, turning points of modern history and global exploration.⁠[9]

On October 26, 2017, he gave an hour-long lecture in Watkins Auditorium on how the First World War should be remembered, offering three reasons it still matters a century later: it connected the world in surprising ways, it was unprecedentedly destructive and its consequences were long-lasting.⁠[10]

In 2018 the UT Libraries opened the exhibit Echoes of War: Human Experiences during World War I and World War II with a lecture by him; he was then Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the center.⁠[11]

On February 16, 2018, at an event hosted by the center and the history department, he spoke on how the First World War provided the crucial context for the independence of Lithuania and the other Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, followed by a panel on the events’ present-day meaning.⁠[12]

He appeared on episode 444 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe who has lectured extensively on Marxism and the rise, reign and fall of Communism; topics included Marxism, anarchism, the Communist Manifesto, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, the Holodomor, the Great Terror, totalitarianism, a response to Darryl Cooper, Nazis versus Communists in Germany, Mao and the Great Leap Forward, North Korea and Russia after the Soviet Union.⁠[13]

As of October 2026 he had produced nine recorded lecture series on topics including turning points of modern history, global explorers, espionage, World War I, diplomacy, dictatorships, the history of Eastern Europe and Communism; Curiosity University also lists his courses on Chernobyl, Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Berlin Wall.⁠[1]

Among them, The Rise of Communism: From Marx to Lenin consists of 12 lectures.⁠[14]

He has won the University of Tennessee’s top two teaching awards and a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.⁠[15]

University of Tennessee, Knoxville: Official website: https://www.utk.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]