Stephen Kotkin

{{short description|American historian, academic and author (born 1959)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Stephen Kotkin

| image = 2015-Mar-11 Stephen Kotkin Politics and Prose.jpg

| alt =

| caption = Kotkin speaking at Politics and Prose in 2015

| pseudonym =

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1959|02|17}}

| birth_place = Englewood, New Jersey

| occupation = Historian, academic, author

| language = English

| nationality = American

| education = University of Rochester (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (MA, PhD)

| alma_mater =

| genre = Russian and Soviet politics and history, communism, global history

| subject = Authoritarianism, geopolitics

| notable_works = {{Plainlist|

Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014)
Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017)
Armageddon Averted: the Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (2001)

}}

| awards =

| website =

| spouse = Soyoung Lee

| children = 2

}}

Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959){{cite web|title=Kotkin, Stephen|url=http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n88163221.html|website=Library of Congress|accessdate=3 February 2015}} is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.{{Cite web|title=Stephen Kotkin|url=https://www.hoover.org/profiles/stephen-kotkin|website=Hoover Institution|language=en|access-date=2020-05-14}} For 33 years, Kotkin taught at Princeton University, where he attained the title of John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs; he took on emeritus status from Princeton University in 2022. He was the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the co-director of the certificate-granting program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy.{{Cite web|title=Stephen Kotkin {{!}} Department of History|url=https://history.princeton.edu/people/stephen-kotkin|website=history.princeton.edu|access-date=2020-05-14}} 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. He is the husband of curator and art historian Soyoung Lee.{{Cite book |last=Lee |first=Soyoung |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Art_of_the_Korean_Renaissance_1400_1600 |title=Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400-1600 |publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-58839-310-4 |pages=ix}}

Kotkin's most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin: The first two volumes have been published as Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017), and the third volume remains to be published.

Early life and education

Kotkin was born in New Jersey, the third son of Jay Kotkin, a factory worker of Belarusian-Jewish descent, and Joanne Korolewicz, a cook and art teacher of Polish descent.{{cite news |title=Joanne Kotkin Palmieri |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/330868105/?article=0fc69e76-b7ef-41b8-924f-d0f15526902f |access-date=December 19, 2023 |work=Tampa Bay Times |date=October 31, 2007 |page=18 |url-access=subscription}} His father's family emigrated from Vitebsk in the Russian Empire (now Belarus).{{cite news |title=Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Stephen Kotkin |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-stephen-kotkin.html |access-date=December 27, 2023 |work=The New York Times |date=June 30, 2023}} He grew up in New York City.{{cite web |title=5 Questions For Stephen Kotkin |url=https://www.hoover.org/research/5-questions-stephen-kotkin-1 |publisher=Hoover Institution |access-date=19 December 2023 |language=en}}

He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1981 with a B.A. degree in English. He studied Russian and Soviet history under Reginald E. Zelnik and Martin Malia at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned an M.A. degree in 1983 and a Ph.D. degree in 1988, both in history.{{cite web|title=The Department of History: Stephen Kotkin|url=https://www.princeton.edu/history/people/display_person.xml?netid=kotkin|publisher=Princeton University|accessdate=3 February 2015}} Initially, his PhD studies focused on the House of Habsburg and the History of France, until an encounter with Michel Foucault persuaded him to look at the relationship between knowledge and power with respect to Stalin.{{cite web|title=Kotkin crafts comprehensive portrait of Stalin's place in the world|author=Michael Hotchkiss|url=https://www.princeton.edu/news/2015/05/18/kotkin-crafts-comprehensive-portrait-stalins-place-world|publisher=Princeton University|accessdate=15 October 2022}}

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

Academic career

Kotkin joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1989. He served as the director of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Program for thirteen years (1995–2008) and as the co-director of the certificate program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy from 2015 to 2022. He is now the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Author

Kotkin has written several nonfiction books about history as well as textbooks. Among scholars of Russia, he is 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.{{Cite journal|last=Zimmerman|first=Andrew|date=2014|title=Foucault in Berkeley and Magnitogorsk: Totalitarianism and the Limits of Liberal Critique|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/abs/foucault-in-berkeley-and-magnitogorsk-totalitarianism-and-the-limits-of-liberal-critique/31CDCE93EE8F58E72570BC15417EC00E|journal=Contemporary European History|language=en|volume=23|issue=2|pages=225–236|doi=10.1017/S0960777314000101|s2cid=144970424|issn=0960-7773}} In 2001, he published Armageddon Averted, a short history of the fall of the Soviet Union. He is a frequent contributor on Russian and Eurasian affairs and he also 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.{{cite web|url=https://history.princeton.edu/sites/history/files/kotkin-CV.pdf |title=Stephen Kotkin: Curriculum Vitae |publisher=Princeton University|author=Stephen Kotkin|accessdate=3 February 2015}} 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."{{cite web|first=Stephen|last=Kotkin|date=November 3, 2017|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-communist-century-1509726265|title=Communism's Bloody Century|work=The Wall Street Journal|access-date=October 11, 2021|archive-date=November 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171103231659/https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-communist-century-1509726265|url-status=dead}}

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.{{cite web |url=https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/stephen-kotkin |title=The Pulitzer Prizes. Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, by Stephen Kotkin |publisher=Columbia University |accessdate= August 24, 2020}} It received reviews in newspapers,{{cite web |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-stalin-volume-1-paradoxes-of-power-1878-1928-by-stephen-kotkin/2014/12/19/2039c70a-577e-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html |title=Book review: 'Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928,' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=December 19, 2014 |first=Ronald Grigor|last=Suny |author-link=Ronald Grigor Suny }}{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/books/stalin-paradoxes-of-power-by-stephen-kotkin.html |title='Stalin: Paradoxes of Power' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 9, 2015 |author=Serge Schmemann |author-link=Serge Schmemann}} magazines,{{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/understanding-stalin/380786/ |title=Understanding Stalin |newspaper=The Atlantic |date=November 1, 2014 |first=Anne|last=Applebaum |author-link=Anne Applebaum }}{{cite web |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/how-stalin-became-stalinist |title=How Stalin Became Stalinist |newspaper=The New Yorker |date=October 20, 2017 |first=Keith|last=Gessen }} and academic journals,{{cite journal |author=Brandenberger, D. |date=2016 |doi=10.1093/ahr/121.1.333 |title=Book Review: Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 Stephen Kotkin |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=121 |issue=1 |pages=333–334 }}{{cite journal |author=Siegelbaum, L. |date=2015 |doi=10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.604 |title=Review: Stalin. Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 by Stephen Kotkin |journal=Slavic Review |volume=74 |issue=3 |pages=604–606 |s2cid=164564763 }} The second volume, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (1184 pp., Penguin Random House, 2017) also received several reviews,{{cite web |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/terror-and-killing-and-more-killing-under-stalin-leading-up-to-world-war-ii/2017/11/22/7c4d26ca-b998-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html |title=Terror and killing and more killing under Stalin leading up to World War II |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=November 22, 2017 |first=Ronald Grigor|last=Suny |author-link=Ronald Grigor Suny }}{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/books/review/stephen-kotkin-stalin-biography.html |title=A Portrait of Stalin in All His Murderous Contradictions |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 19, 2017 |author=Mark Atwood Lawrence }} magazines,{{cite magazine |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n07/sheila-fitzpatrick/just-like-that |title=Just like that: Second-Guessing Stalin |newspaper=London Review of Books |date=April 5, 2018 |first=Sheila|last=Fitzpatrick |volume=40 |issue=7 |author-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick }} and academic journals{{cite journal |author=Lenoe, M. |date=2019 |doi=10.1093/ahr/rhy475 |title=Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=124 |issue=1 |pages=376–377 }}{{cite journal |author=Carley, M. J. |date=2018 |doi=10.1080/09668136.2018.1455444 |title=Stalin. Vol. II: Waiting for Hitler 1928–1941 |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |volume=70 |issue=3 |pages=477–479 |s2cid=158248404 }} upon its release. In these books, among other things, Stephen Kotkin suggested{{sfn|Kotkin|2014|p=473}} that Lenin's Testament was authored by Nadezhda Krupskaya. Kotkin pointed out that the purported dictations were not logged in the customary manner by Lenin's secretariat at the time they were supposedly given; that they were typed, with no shorthand originals in the archives, and that Lenin did not affix his initials to them;{{sfn|Kotkin|2014|p=498}}{{sfn|Kotkin|2014|p=505}} that by the alleged dates of the dictations, Lenin had lost much of his power of speech following a series of small strokes on December 15–16, 1922, raising questions about his ability to dictate anything as detailed and intelligible as the Testament{{sfn|Kotkin|2014|p=483}}{{sfn|Kotkin|2014|p=489}} and that the dictation given in December 1922 is suspiciously responsive to debates that took place at the 12th Communist Party Congress in April 1923.{{sfn|Kotkin|2014|p=500}} However, the Testament has been accepted as genuine by many historians, including E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Dmitri Volkogonov, Vadim Rogovin and Oleg Khlevniuk.{{cite web|last=White|first=Fred|date=1 June 2015|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/01/kot1-j01.html|title=A review of Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928|access-date=29 January 2021|website=World Socialist Web Site}}{{Dubious|date=December 2022}}{{cite magazine|last=Gessen|first=Keith|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/how-stalin-became-stalinist|title=How Stalin Became a Stalinist|date=30 October 2017|access-date=29 January 2021|magazine=The New Yorker}} Kotkin's claims were also rejected by Richard Pipes soon after they were published, who claimed Kotkin contradicted himself by citing documents in which Stalin referred to the Testament as the "known letter of comrade Lenin." Pipes also points to the inclusion of the document in Lenin's Collected Works.{{cite magazine|first=Richard|last=Pipes|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/cleverness-joseph-stalin/|title=The Cleverness of Joseph Stalin|magazine=New York Review of Books|date=November 20, 2014|access-date=October 11, 2021}}

The third and final volume, Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941-1990, is set to be published in "several years", according to Kotkin in November 2024.{{Cite web |date=November 13, 2024 |title=Stephen Kotkin podcast transcript |url=https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/stephen-kotkin/ |website="Conversations with Tyler" podcast series}} He is currently writing a multi-century history of Siberia, focusing on the Ob River Valley.

Published works

Year	Title	Collaborator(s)	Publisher	ISBN
class="wikitable sortable"
1991	Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era		Berkeley: University of California; paperback with afterword in 1993	{{ISBN\|0962262900}}
1995	Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East		M. E. Sharpe	{{ISBN\|1563245469}}
1995	Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization		Berkeley: University of California	{{ISBN\|0520069080}}
2001	Armageddon Averted: the Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000		Oxford and New York: Oxford University; paperback with new preface, 2003; updated edition 2008	{{ISBN\|0192802453}}
2002	Political Corruption in Transition: A Sceptic's Handbook	Co-authored with András Sajó	Central European University Press	{{ISBN\|9639241466}}
2003	The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789–1991	Co-authored with Catherine Evtuhov	Rowman & Littlefield	{{ISBN\|0742520625}}
2005	Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia	Co-authored with Charles K. Armstrong, Gilbert Rozman, and Samuel S. Kim	M. E. Sharpe
2009	Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communist Establishment	With a contribution by Jan Gross	New York: Modern Library/Random House	{{ISBN\|978-0679642763}}
2010	Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China: An International History	Edited with Bruce A. Elleman	M. E. Sharpe	{{ISBN\|978-0765625144}}
2014	Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe	Co-edited with Mark Beissinger	Cambridge University Press	{{ISBN\|1107054176}}
2014	Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928{{cite book\|author=Stephen Kotkin\|title=Stalin, Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power\|date=2014\|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OB90AwAAQBAJ&q=stalin\|location=New York\|publisher=Vintage Books\|isbn=978-0698170100}}		Penguin Press	{{ISBN\|1594203792}}
2017	Stalin: Volume II: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941		Penguin Press	{{ISBN\|978-1594203800}}

Political views

Stephen Kotkin supports a centrist view of "normal politics," based on the premise that "problems arise at the extremes, the far left and the far right that don't recognize the legitimacy either of capitalism or of democratic rule of law institutions."{{cite podcast | url= https://www.happyscribe.com/public/lex-fridman-podcast-artificial-intelligence-ai/stephen-kotkin-stalin-putin-and-the-nature-of-power |title=The Lex Fridman Podcast |website=lexfridman.com/ai |host=Lex Fridman |date= January 3, 2020 |time=01:17:46 |access-date=December 8, 2024}} Several socialist media outlets have accused Kotkin of ideological bias against the Bolshevik Revolution, pointing out that Kotkin referred to American journalist and socialist John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World, as "former Harvard cheerleader" in his book Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.{{cite news |last=Williams |first=Fred |date=June 1, 2015 |title=A review of Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 |url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/01/kot1-j01.html |work=World Socialist Website |access-date=December 8, 2024}}{{cite news |last=Marot |first=John |date=November 20, 2020 |title=Stephen Kotkin's Stalin Is a Distorting Mirror of the Russian Revolution |url=https://jacobin.com/2020/11/stephen-kotkin-stalin-russian-revolution-book-review |work=Jacobin |access-date=December 8, 2024}} When speaking about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in an interview with Foreign Affairs, Kotkin suggested that a serous threat of regime change in Russia could ultimately motivate Vladimir Putin with to stop the war. Kotkin also described Donald Trump's foreign policy regarding the war in Ukraine as unpredictable, and said he thought it was unlikely that Trump would succeed in becoming an autocrat, given the existing checks and balances in the United States' political system.{{cite news |date=November 7, 2024 |title=Trump and the Future of American Power: A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin |url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trump-and-future-american-power-stephen-kotkin |work=Foreign Affairs |access-date= December 8, 2024}}

References

Works cited

{{cite book |last=Kotkin |first=Stephen |year=2014 |title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 |location=London |publisher=Allen Lane |isbn=978-0-7139-9944-0 }}

External links

[http://scholar.princeton.edu/kotkin/publications Available articles and publications for download] at Princeton University.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFcb50HUNvE Author talk on Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928] at Politics and Prose. YouTube. March 11, 2015.
[http://www.historyextra.com/podcast/second-world-war/stalin%E2%80%99s-early-years-and-mein-kampf Stalin's early years and Mein Kampf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150203155117/http://www.historyextra.com/podcast/second-world-war/stalin%E2%80%99s-early-years-and-mein-kampf |date=2015-02-03 }}. BBC. January 1, 2015.
{{Internet Archive author |sname = Stephen Kotkin }}

Category:Living people

Category:1959 births

Category:Writers from Englewood, New Jersey

Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent

Category:American people of Polish descent

Category:Writers about the Soviet Union

Category:Historians of Russia

Category:Historians of communism

Category:21st-century American historians

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:Hoover Institution people

Category:Hoover Institution Edwards Media Fellows

Category:Princeton University faculty

Category:Stalinism-era scholars and writers

Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni

Category:University of Rochester alumni

Category:Historians of the Soviet Union

Category:American male non-fiction writers