He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Russian history in 1967. When named distinguished professor of history in 1982, his announcement quoted him: "Every good person deep down is an anarchist." He retired in 1999. Avrich collected books, photos, and papers from key anarchists and donated a 20,000-item collection to the Library of Congress. He died on February 16, 2006, in Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital from complications due to Alzheimer's disease. His Soviet research and documents on the suppressed Kronstadt insurrection led to several books on anarchists in the Russian revolution, including "Kronstadt, 1921". He interviewed Soviet exiles in New York, where he first met members of the "Freie Arbeiter Stimme". Avrich then moved to major figures in American anarchism, and published a book in 1980 on the Ferrer Schools inspired by Francisco Ferrer. His 1984 book on the Haymarket Riot won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, and his 1991 presented the pair as revolutionaries rather than philosophical anarchists. Avrich's last book, in 1995, compiled 30 years of interviews across the anarchist movement. Several of his works were nominated for Pulitzer Prizes.