Stanley G. Payne

Stanley G. Payne is the Jaume Vicens Vives and Hilldale Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught from 1968 until his retirement in 2005. He was chair of the Department of History in 1979-82. Earlier, he taught at UCLA (1962-68) and the University of Minnesota (1960-62). Payne is a preeminent theorist of fascism, and an authority on the history of modern Spain. Known for his typological description of fascism, he is a specialist in the Spanish fascist movement and has also produced comparative analyses of Western European fascism. His work shows that there were some specific ways in which National Socialism paralleled Russian communism to a much greater degree than Fascism was capable of doing. One of his best known books is The Spanish Civil War, The Soviet Union and Communism (2004), which analyzes Joseph Stalin and the Soviet government's intervention in Spain. In the 1960s, his books were published in Spanish by Éditions Ruedo ibérico (ERi), a publishing company set up by Spanish Republican exiles in Paris to publish works forbidden in Spain by the Francoist government. In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the CEU-Universidad Cardenal Herrera Oria. Payne received the B.A. degree (1955) from Pacific Union College, the M.A. (1957) from Claremont Graduate School, and the Ph.D. (1960) from Columbia University, all in history.