Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959)[1] is an American historian, academic and author. He is currently the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is also Co-Director of the Program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy and the Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.[2] He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.[3] He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

Stephen Kotkin
Stephen Kotkin speaking at Politics and Prose in March 2015
Born (1959-02-17) February 17, 1959
OccupationHistorian, academic, author
NationalityAmerican
EducationB.A. (1981); M.A. (1983); Ph.D. (1988)
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
University of Rochester
GenreRussian and Soviet politics and history, communism, global history
SubjectAuthoritarianism, geopolitics
Notable worksStalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014)
Stalin, Vol. II, Waiting for Hitler, 1928–1941 (2017)
Armageddon Averted: the Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (2001)

Kotkin's most recent book is his second of three planned volumes which discuss the life and times of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, namely Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin, Vol. II, Waiting for Hitler, 1928–1941 (2017).

Academic career

Kotkin graduated from the University of Rochester in 1981 with a B.A. in English. He studied Russian and Soviet history under Reginald E. Zelnik and Martin Malia at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his M.A. in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1988, both in history.[4]

Starting in 1986, Kotkin traveled to the Soviet Union and then Russia multiple times for academic research and fellowships. He was a visiting scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences (1993, 1995, 1998, 1999 and 2012) and its predecessor, the USSR Academy of Sciences (1991). He was also a visiting scholar at University of Tokyo's Institute of Social Science in 1994 and 1997.[5]

Kotkin joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1989 and was the director of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Program for thirteen years (1995–2008) and is currently the co-director of the Certificate Program in History and Diplomacy (2015–present). He is the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton. He is also a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.[4]

Author

Kotkin has authored several nonfiction books on history as well as textbooks and is perhaps best known for Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization which exposes the realities of everyday life in the Soviet city of Magnitogorsk during the 1930s. In 2001, he published Armageddon Averted, a short history of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Kotkin is a frequent contributor on Russian and Eurasian affairs and writes book and film reviews for various publications, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, the Financial Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post. He also contributed as a commentator for NPR and the BBC.[5] In 2017, Kotkin wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Communist democide resulted in the deaths of at least 65 million people between 1917 and 2017, stating: "Though communism has killed huge numbers of people intentionally, even more of its victims have died from starvation as a result of its cruel projects of social engineering."[6][7]

His first volume in a projected trilogy on the life of Stalin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (976 pp., Penguin Random House, 2014) analyzes his life through 1928, and was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.[8] It received reviews in newspapers,[9][10] magazines,[11][12] and academic journals,[13][14] The second volume, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (1184 pp., Penguin Random House, 2017) also received strong reviews in newspapers,[15][16] magazines,[17] and academic journals[18][19] upon its release.

Kotkin is currently writing the third volume, Stalin: Miscalculation and the Mao Eclipse (TBA). He is also working on a multi-century history of Siberia, focusing on the Ob River Valley.[5]

Published works

YearTitleCollaborator(s)PublisherISBN
1991Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev EraBerkeley: University of California; paperback with afterword in 1993ISBN 0962262900
1995Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far EastM. E. SharpeISBN 1563245469
1995Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a CivilizationBerkeley: University of CaliforniaISBN 0520069080
2001Armageddon Averted: the Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000Oxford and New York: Oxford University; paperback with new preface, 2003; updated edition 2008ISBN 0192802453
2002Political Corruption in Transition: A Sceptic's HandbookCo-authored with András SajóCentral European University PressISBN 9639241466
2003The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789–1991Co-authored with Catherine EvtuhovRowman & LittlefieldISBN 0742520625
2005Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast AsiaCo-authored with Charles K. Armstrong, Gilbert Rozman, and Samuel S. KimM. E. Sharpe
2009Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communist EstablishmentWith a contribution by Jan GrossNew York: Modern Library/Random HouseISBN 978-0679642763
2010Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China: An International HistoryEdited with Bruce A. EllemanM. E. SharpeISBN 978-0765625144
2014Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern EuropeCo-edited with Mark BeissingerCambridge University PressISBN 1107054176
2014Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928[20]Penguin PressISBN 1594203792
2017Stalin: Volume II: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941Penguin PressISBN 978-1594203800

References

  1. "Kotkin, Stephen". Library of Congress. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  2. "Stephen Kotkin | Department of History". history.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-14.
  3. "Stephen Kotkin". Hoover Institution. Retrieved 2020-05-14.
  4. "The Department of History: Stephen Kotkin". Princeton University. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  5. Stephen Kotkin. "Stephen Kotkin: Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Princeton University. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  6. Kotkin, Stephen (3 November 2017). "Communism's Bloody Century" The Wall Street Journal. Archived 3 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  7. Editorial Board (6 November 2017). "The legacy of 100 years of communism: 65 million deaths" Chicago Tribune. Archived 7 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  8. "The Pulitzer Prizes. Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin". Columbia University. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  9. Ronald Grigor Suny (December 19, 2014). "Book review: 'Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,' by Stephen Kotkin". The Washington Post.
  10. Serge Schmemann (January 9, 2015). "'Stalin: Paradoxes of Power' by Stephen Kotkin". The New York Times.
  11. Anne Applebaum (November 1, 2014). "Understanding Stalin". The Atlantic.
  12. Keith Gessen (October 20, 2017). "How Stalin Became Stalinist". The New Yorker.
  13. Brandenberger, D. (2016). "Book Review: Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 Stephen Kotkin". The American Historical Review. 121 (1): 333–334. doi:10.1093/ahr/121.1.333.
  14. Siegelbaum, L. (2015). "Review: Stalin. Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 by Stephen Kotkin". Slavic Review. 74 (3): 604–606. doi:10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.604.
  15. Ronald Grigor Suny (November 22, 2017). "Terror and killing and more killing under Stalin leading up to World War II". The Washington Post.
  16. Mark Atwood Lawrence (October 19, 2017). "A Portrait of Stalin in All His Murderous Contradictions". The New York Times.
  17. Sheila Fitzpatrick (April 5, 2018). "Just like that: Second-Guessing Stalin". London Review of Books.
  18. Lenoe, M. (2019). "Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941". The American Historical Review. 124 (1): 376–377. doi:10.1093/ahr/rhy475.
  19. Carley, M. J. (2018). "Stalin. Vol. II: Waiting for Hitler 1928–1941". Europe-Asia Studies. 70 (3): 477–479. doi:10.1080/09668136.2018.1455444. S2CID 158248404.
  20. Stephen Kotkin (6 November 2014). Stalin, Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 9780698170100.
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