Thomas Pazik

Thomas Pazik was born and bred in Indiana, but he moved to Michigan so he, his mother, and his father could be closer to his grandparents. Tommy graduated from Harper Creek High School in 2019, but instead of pursuing a career in chemistry–as was his original plan–he switched gears to become a historian and linguist. As a historian, his objective was to learn about collective memory: how events of the past shape a people’s shared experiences and identity. He wrote a thesis about how the Holodomor Famine in Soviet Ukraine shaped Ukrainians’ perceptions of their sister nation in the 21st century. As a linguist, he not only learned Russian during his undergraduate studies, but he taught himself Polish over the summer of 2023. Now, as a student in MIRS, he is working on a thesis about the development of Russian autocracy under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. His broader interests mainly center around political and economic history, realpolitik in the 21st century, military history, and the cultural power of Christianity in Eastern Europe. For fun, Tommy loves watching films and TV shows, taking long walks through forests, visiting old churches, and re-reading the greatest works of fantasy/sci-fi, such as The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, the Dune series, The Wheel of Time, and The Expanse.